It’s only been a few short weeks that I’ve been reading
Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories.
There have been highs and lows, and after only six stories I’m feeling Conan
fatigue. If I’m being honest I think it’s overall blogging fatigue as bumping
up my posting schedule to two posts a week is starting to take its toll.
Finally reading these stories has been an interesting experience. I find the
stories vary in quality to such a degree that you never really know how much
you’ll enjoy the next story. My thought is that these earlier stories might be
the worst of the lot but I’ll only know for sure once I’ve read them all. For
now though, I think I need a little break from Conan as this story proved once
again that the quality of the stories fluctuates significantly.
“The Pool of the
Black One” by Robert E. Howard, originally published in Weird Tales (Oct. 1933)
Off the west cost of Zingara and in sight of the Barachan
Isle, a woman is sunbathing on a ship. Without warning Conan rises out of the
water and climbs aboard. He’s accosted by the captain Zaporavo who is
immediately threatened by Conan’s sheer physical size. He has a right to feel
that way since Conan plans on taking command of his ship. He doesn’t act on it
yet, instead he begins making friends with the crew so that even if their
captain doesn’t care for the Cimmerian, the crew will.
The ship sets anchor at an island where the captain hopes
to find treasure. They land on the beach and make their way into the jungle.
Conan makes him move and kills the captain. Shortly after he sees a large, dark
skinned creature carrying a man away deeper into the jungle. It’s humanoid in shape but not a man. It’s
larger and looks just slightly otherworldly. Conan follows it into a hidden
city and there he witnesses the evil secrets of the island and its inhabitants.
Before long, Conan leads a rescue operation and evacuates the island in a
hurry. He’s fighting tooth and nail to save as much of his crew as possible to
man the pirate ship that now belongs to him.
Structurally, this story is very similar to the one I
reviewed last week. In both stories Conan gets attached to a scantily clad
woman, uncovers a weird hidden city with a strange culture, living in the
presence of strange and inexplicable magic. Conan confronts that magic and the
citizens of the city in question, then escape with the damsel in distress at
his side. Of the two stories, this one has the most excitement in it but the
former, “The Slithering Shadow”, is the better story. Howard’s writing was
tighter in the previous story than it is here. The plot, while similar in both,
flows better in the first story. While there are plenty of unanswered questions
regarding Thog and the dreaming citizens of Xuthal, Howard at least developed it
beyond simply introducing a threat to Conan as he does with “The Pool of the
Black One”. The city on the island, the one with the green pool of magic, isn’t
developed. Rather, it plays the role of antagonist HQ for the Black Ones.
What “The Pool of the Black One” does better is putting
Conan in an entirely new setting. Being on a pirate ship gives Howard the
freedom to play around with things that normally wouldn’t work in other
settings. Finding the island and seeking treasure (as was Zaporavo’s reason for
anchoring there) are good, classic beginnings to an adventure story. Today it
would be hopelessly cliché as it’s been overused to death, but with Conan it
works. By the time Howard was using this as the beginning of his story, this
idea was still fresh. The fact that the characters never even get close to
picking up the trail of the treasure also helps.
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| From the comic book adaptation by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and Sonny Trinidad. The Savage Sword of Conan #22. |
Overall this is a straightforward story but Howard does
take time to show off his writing skills in the first chapter which is
excellent. It’s one of the best single chapters I’ve read in a Conan story so far. Conan’s introduction
on the ship is told through the point of view of Sancha, the captain’s woman.
This outsider point of view allows Howard to include humour in the story when
Conan is proving himself to the crew members. It’s also nice to see the
incredulous reaction that Sancha and the ship’s captain have at the way Conan
arrives aboard. I quite enjoy how quickly the tension built between the
characters. I would have like this chapter to be the entire story because once
the crew arrives at the island the plot unravels.
It’s a straightforward kind of adventure story where the
strangeness of the locals is slowly uncovered to be a horrific culture of
uncivilized and far more barbarous beings than anyone aboard the boat. The
exploration of this hidden culture and the island’s inhabitants is poorly
written. There is casual racism thrown in and the narrator’s mention that the
islanders are specifically not black men doesn’t do anything to dissuade me
that they weren’t thought of as such in the writer’s mind. In terms of plot,
Conan’s desire to explore the island and uncover what’s going on with the crewmembers
being taken away seems pointless. His goal on this island was to kill the
captain so that he could take over the ship as his own. This happened just a
few minutes after landing on the beach. Why spend time on the island after it’s
been made pretty clear there is no treasure to be found?
While this middle part of the story isn’t good, there are
some good ideas lying around. I like the creepiness of the green pool and there
is a pretty palpable sense of dread and danger. Though I like the green pool, its
power and presence on the island is a mystery that never get gets discussed or developed.
It’s simply a device to create conflict with Conan. So are the islanders.
Howard fails to make me interested in their story and culture, but he does make
good use of them as opponents to Conan. I found the action and sense of
adventure really picked up during the last few pages of the story. The crew’s
escape of the island and the overflowing green pool makes for a riveting few moments.
Here, Howard’s writing calls back to the tone of the first chapter without ever
really hitting the same note. Though it doesn’t reach the same heights as the
first chapter is does help make this story a good one by ending the downwards
slope in quality since the beginning of the second chapter.
The odd thing about this story is that it feels like the
second act of a larger story, featuring Conan during his time on the high seas.
What happened before? What will he be doing now that he has his own ship and a
crew? I want to read the stories that are set before and after this one. Since
I’m reading these stories in their publication order, I might get either one of
those stories later on but I doubt that I will. Howard doesn’t seem to care
about presenting a complete story of Conan’s life, not even in broad strokes.
The references done to past events and the different countries of the Hyborian
Age are mostly used as a way to add detail and a sense of realism to the place
and time in which Conan’s stories happen. I don’t get the feeling that it’s all
there for continuity.
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| Cover art by Val Mayerik. |
Rating: 3 shrunken pirates
“The Pool of the Black One” is a fun adventure story that
gives Conan plenty of opportunity to show off his strength and cunning in
battle. Howard includes some really excellent writing but the quality of the
overall story is undermined by lackluster plotting in the middle chapter.
Thankfully Howard racks up the tension for the conclusion and the story ends
with the reader wanting more from Conan’s time on the sea.
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