8.6 /10 1 Votes
5/5 Risingshadow Country United States Series Conan the Barbarian Media type Print (Paperback) Publisher Tor Books | 3.7/5 Goodreads Cover artist Kirk Reinert Language English Publication date 1986 Originally published 1986 Genre Sword and sorcery | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Steve Perry books, Sword and sorcery books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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.
Contents
The book also includes "Conan the Indestructible," L. Sprague de Camp's chronological essay on Conan's career.
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."
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."