Conan vs. the Death Lord of Thanza

Green vs. Carpenter

Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza by Roland J. Green is a big step up from Conan of the Red Brotherhood by Leonard Carpenter. That isn't to say Carpenter's adventure was completely awful. It also isn't to say this one by Green doesn't have its flaws. Even so, I responded to this story and the level of its writing far more favorably than I did Conan of the Red Brotherhood. Based solely on a contrasting comparison of the two books, I feel Green is the more talented of the two. However, while Green's story is more straightforward, Carpenter's was more imaginative. The distinction is in the craft of Green's writing, especially his use of various similes, which reads more like Howard's prose without slavishly aping it.

Conan joins the Thanza Rangers

The set-up is simple enough. Conan sneaks over the border into Aquilonia because of a price on his head in Ophir. He foils an attack by pirates on a merchant ship as he crosses the Tybor River and winds up in Shamar, a city near the legend-haunted Thanza Mountains, a disputed territory between Aquilonia and neighboring Nemedia. In Shamar, Conan reads a posted notice promising pardons for applicants to the so-called Thanza Rangers, a military unit of conscripts and criminals meant to rein in bandits hiding in the mountains. The Cimmerian laughs at the idea, knowing the expedition is likely doomed, but trouble with a local pimp over a prostitute Conan rescued from mistreatment and the ungrateful riverboat captain trying to collect the bounty on his head in Ophir (or Argos? Conan is wanted in a lot of places) sends him on a rooftop scramble to the recruiting station.

Once enlisted, Conan's natural athleticism and experience as a mercenary makes him the best of the recruits but also puts him into conflict with the rangers' grizzled drill sergeant, Tharmis Rog. Another complicating factor is the young nobleman ostensibly in charge of the unit, the inexperienced and foppish-looking Captain Klarnides. Nestorinus, a highborn friend of the nobleman who has attached himself to the expedition, is even more of a liability than Klarnides, if that is even possible. These then are the dominant personalities among the Thanza Rangers and, backed by a crew of half-trained debtors, drunkards, thieves, and other miscreants, they set off into the mountains unaware that bandits will soon be the least of their concerns.

Meanwhile, the bad guys...

Meanwhile, from the prologue onward and acting as a parallel to the formation and early movements of the Thanza rangers, lots of time is devoted to the very bandits the rangers have been sent to destroy. Led by the warrior woman Lysinka, the bandits are a mostly egalitarian organization. Not only led by a woman, the band has many female members and strict punishments for unwanted advances or outright assault, putting many matters to a vote. Lysinka herself is unusual in that her mostly unmentioned backstory, a former countess and concubine turned wilderness outlaw, sounds like bad fanfic or the origin of a teenager's Dungeons and Dragons character, but she is written well and comes across as mostly believable.

During their raid upon a small caravan, Lysinka's bandits witness a cart laden with a heavy chest suddenly rise into the air and hurl itself through the trees out of sight. We learn the chest contains the Soul of Thanza, an evil wizard or demigod from the empire of Acheron, irresistibly drawn to the mountains where it ruled in days of old. Where the caravan came from, who manned it, and their ultimate purpose are all unknown. Presumably, they worked for the unnamed wizard that soon emerges as a behind-the-scenes player in the scramble to acquire the soul of Thanza. Lack of precise or at least detailed explanations pepper several parts of the book, sometimes to the story's benefit and sometimes not.

The bandits encounter another group led by Grolin, a former baron of nearby Nemedia. As with many other things that remain nebulous in this story, it is uncertain if Grolin's exile from Nemedia was decreed or self-imposed. After forming an alliance to find the soul, there is some mostly one-sided sexual tension between Grolin and Lysinka. It doesn't matter, because Grolin begins being harassed by spectral images and communications from the token evil wizard that is always involved in affairs like these. Lysinka on the other hand meets Conan on the field of battle and throws in her lot with the Cimmerian after realizing how untrustworthy the mage-possessed Grolin has become (or always was). Lysinka and Conan wind up in bed in short order and Lysinka becomes very attached, very quickly, but this is Conan we're talking about.

Tried and true, or just tired?

There is more to the story; venomous winged serpents, a subterranean water dragon, skeletal undead warriors known as the Slayers of Death, Lysinka's dogged efforts to reunite with Conan, a flying mountain (yes, no joke), and finally, the Death Lord himself. The Slayers of Death are unique in that they are one of the rare instances of good undead from the world of Conan. I didn't care for them much, but did breathe a sigh of relief when they turned out to not be a menace. Not because I was afraid for Conan, the Cimmerian dispatches the undead before breakfast every other day, but because I am sick to death from boredom of the undead being a go-to menace for these franchise authors. Green at least goes for the gotcha moment by making the skeleton warriors enemies of the Death Lord.

Full on super-villain

Finally, we have the Death Lord himself. Who would come to join with the Soul of Thanza and claim the power of ancient Acheron was never really in doubt. What was entertaining and amusing in varying degrees was just how thoroughly they went full on super-villain once the sorcerous might was at their fingertips. Draining the life-force from enemies and allies alike, conjuring up a suit of weirdly organic red armor, causing their mountaintop lair to rip free and go flying through the sky as a mobile fortress to overawe the pitiful peasants below, if there is a super-villain checklist the Deathlord of Thanza is marking every box complete. His end comes oddly quickly for such a seemingly powerful opponent, but this isn't the first franchise novel to wrap things up in a hurry with only a few pages to spare. The last page or so is an odd A Tale of Two Cities moment. Instead of Sydney Carton we have Lysinka, experiencing a waking vision of Conan one day fighting alongside her son-- not her son by Conan himself, but her son by Fergus, a renegade Bossonian and faithful hanger on from her band of outlaws. Poor Fergus probably had to stop up his ears while Conan railed her at night. So, looks like things turned out okay for ol' Fergus eventually!