Conan the Fearless

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Conan the Fearless
Conan the Fearless.jpg
cover of Conan the Fearless
Author Steve Perry
Cover artist Kirk Reinert
Country United States
Language English
Series Conan the Barbarian
Genre Sword and sorcery Fantasy
Publisher Tor Books
Publication date
1986
Media type Print (Paperback)
Pages 275 pp
ISBN 0-8125-4248-7

Conan the Fearless is a fantasy novel written by Steve Perry featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in February 1986; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in January 1987, and was reprinted at least once. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books in January 1988.[1]

The book also includes "Conan the Indestructible," L. Sprague de Camp's chronological essay on Conan's career.[2]

Plot

Conan gets stuck in the Corinthian city of Mornstadinos defending Eldia, a girl who can command fire elementals, against the mage Sovartus. This brings him into conflict with a host of other threats as well, including the half-demon witch Djuvula, the artistocratic were-panther Lemparius, the avaricious criminal Loganaro, and various and sundry monsters.

Reception

Reviewer Lagomorph Rex finds the novel "not all that bad of a book," and "easily Perry's best out of his 5," but notes that "[i]t's obvious that he basically re-used this book's plot for all of his others. All have Conan journeying from one place to another place, and meeting up with a series of evil wizards, bandits, what have you and being aided by a scrappy girl and a good wizard or priest of some sort. It works here, but would have probably been better not used quite so many times." He also takes issue with "those few chapters where Conan inexplicably wasted time back in his hotel room rather than riding out to rescue the children," which "seemed as if they were simply added to pad the story out."[2]

Ryan Harvey rates Conan the Fearless above Conan the Free Lance, one of Perry's later Conan novels, in a review of that book. Harvey assesses the author's Conan corpus in general as "goofy," noting that he "has a reputation among Conan fandom for overkill and general silliness."[3]

Notes

References

Preceded by Tor Conan series
(publication order)
Succeeded by
Conan the Renegade
Preceded by Complete Conan Saga
(William Galen Gray chronology)
Succeeded by
"The God in the Bowl"