Conan the Valorous
cover of Conan the Valorous
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| Author | John Maddox Roberts |
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| Cover artist | Kirk Reinert |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Conan the Barbarian |
| Genre | Sword and sorcery Fantasy |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
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Publication date
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1985 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 280 pp |
| ISBN | |
Conan the Valorous is a fantasy novel written by John Maddox Roberts featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in September 1985; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in September 1986, and was reprinted in January 1992. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books in September 1987.
The book also includes "Conan the Indestructible," L. Sprague de Camp's chronological essay on Conan's career.
Stygian sorceress Hathor-Ka tricks Conan into taking certain items to Ben Morgh, the sacred mountain of Crom, in Cimmeria. His route takes him through Koth, Nemedia and the Border Kingdom, where he is diverted by the rescue of a chieftainess. Simultaneously, the Vendhyan sorcerer Jaganath is also traveling to the mountain. In Cimmeria, the clans are gathering against the Venir and their allies the lizardmen who have been preying on them; they too are heading to Ben Morgh, where all comes together in a final battle. As the conflict rages, Conan and a wizard from Khitai wage a more crucial supernatural conflict in Crom's Cave inside the mountain involving the Venhyans, Hathor-Ka and her patron Thoth-Amon. Ultimately Cimmeria is delivered from outside sorcery, and Conan takes off to go raiding with the Aesir.
Don D'Ammassa, writing of Roberts' Conan novels, noted that "[a]lthough Roberts did not recreate Howard's character exactly, making him more intellectual and less inclined to solve every problem by hitting it with a sword, his evocation of the barbaric setting is superior to that of most of the other writers contributing to the series."
Writing of some other Tor Conan novels, reviewer Ryan Harvey called Roberts "the most consistently successful of its stable of authors," and "the most consistently entertaining" of them, showing "deft ability with storytelling and action scenes, and a thankful tendency not to overplay his hand and try to ape Robert E. Howard’s style."
Reviewer Lagomorph Rex finds the novel "by far the best Conan story I've read in quite a while," "[o]utside of [those by] REH himself. He writes "[t]he nicest thing about this volume though is that it wasn't padded. It felt more like a trilogy of interconnected short stories ... in Koth and Nemedia, then the Border Kingdoms and finally Cimmeria." He praises the story for "re-introduc[ing] Thoth Amon" and providing "some vague inkling of just how powerful he truly is." He also notes that it "sets up "The Frost Giant's Daughter" quite nicely."
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