7.4 /10 1 Votes
Language English Publication date 1995 Pages 279 pp Originally published 1995 Publisher Tor Books Country United States of America | 3.7/5 Goodreads Series Conan the Barbarian Media type Print (Paperback) ISBN 0-8125-4499-4 Cover artist Ciruelo Cabral | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genres Sword and sorcery, Speculative fiction Similar Sword and sorcery books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Conan and the Emerald Lotus is a fantasy novel written by John C. Hocking featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1995; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in September 1999.
Contents
According to Hocking, he wrote the novel out of dissatisfaction with the Conan novels being published in the early 1990s, "trying to put into the story all the things I thought were missing from Conan pastiche at that time." After taking three years to write it, he was proud enough of the result that he "didn't want to just drop it into a drawer ....[s]o I sent out a handful of letters, and L. Sprague de Camp responded ...that if I sent him my book he'd look it over. He liked it a lot and LOTUS was published."
Plot
Having refused to enter the service of the wizard Ethram-Fal, Conan has been subjected to a curse the is gradually robbing him of life. The sorceress Lady Zelandra offers to lift the curse in return for the barbarian retrieving for her the deadly emerald lotus to which she is addicted—which is in the possession of Ethram-Fal. To save his own life from Ethram-Fal Conan must challenge the evil wizard again but stealing the sorceress's price from his desert fortress. He is aided by the dagger-throwing Neesa and the mute Heng Shih.
Reception
According to Howard Andrew Jones, "If you were to ask Conan fans who wrote the best Conan story after Robert E. Howard, a lot of people would point to John Hocking. ... it is Hocking, above all, who consistently makes people's favorites list. ... Hocking may well be one of the best hopes readers of sword and sorcery have today."