The Hour of the Dragon
Conan's only full-length novel by Robert E. Howard.
In this novel, Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero Conan faces his greatest challenge. Published serially in Weird Tales from late 1935 into early 1936, it was one of the final Conan adventures released before Howard’s death, though not his last written. The story originally appeared under the title The Hour of the Dragon, but later book editions often called it Conan the Conqueror.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Robert E. Howard
- Cover artist
- John Forte
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Series
- Conan the Barbarian
- Genre
- Sword & Sorcery
- Publisher
- Gnome Press
- Released
- 1950
Facts from the source article.
Plot overview
Conan is forty-two and ruling as Aquilonia's king when conspirators plot his overthrow. They want Valerius, the heir of King Numedides—whom Conan killed to take the crown—on the throne. To achieve this, they use necromancy to resurrect Xaltotun, a sorcerer from the long-vanished evil empire of Acheron. With Xaltotun's help, the rival kingdom of Nemedia defeats and occupies Aquilonia's army. Conan is captured and set for execution, but a slave girl named Zenobia risks her life to help him escape. His mission to reclaim his throne requires finding the Heart of Ahriman, a magical artifact that can defeat the wizard. This quest carries him across every kingdom of the Hyborian Age. Once he succeeds, he promises to make Zenobia his queen. The story's early chapters closely follow the plot of an earlier Conan short story, "The Scarlet Citadel." In both, Conan is trapped in a dungeon full of monsters, finds an unexpected ally, and breaks free. Meanwhile, the people of Aquilonia's capital, thinking he is dead, riot and are ready to accept a different king. After that point, the two tales split. In the short story, Conan returns just as the rioting begins and quickly defeats his enemies. In the novel, Aquilonia endures a long, harsh foreign occupation while Conan undertakes a dangerous, extended quest before he can finally return and eliminate his foes. The novel's plot is a loose blend of ideas from several Conan stories, with "The Scarlet Citadel" being the most prominent influence.
Publication history
Robert E. Howard wrote only one novel-length Conan story, and it is widely regarded as among his finest. He completed it for the British publisher Dennis Archer in May 1934. Archer had rejected a collection of Howard’s work the previous year but specifically requested a novel instead. Before the book could be printed, Archer’s company went bankrupt, and the manuscript ended up in the hands of the Official Receiver. The story first saw print as a five-part serial in Weird Tales, running from December 1935 to April 1936; a printing error labeled chapter 20 as chapter 21. Its first hardcover book appearance came from Gnome Press in 1950, under the title Conan the Conqueror, which remained the standard name until 1977. The initial paperback edition was a 1953 Ace Books release (D-36), bound as a tête-bêche double with The Sword of Rhiannon and featuring cover art by Norman Saunders. Numerous reprints followed, including a 1967 edition from Lancer Books and a 1977 Berkley/Putnam edition edited by Karl Edward Wagner. This 1977 version was the first to restore the original magazine text and title, a practice adopted by most later editions. In 1989, Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. issued a deluxe illustrated edition by Ezra Tucker as volume XI of their Conan set. More recently, the novel has appeared in collections such as The Essential Conan (1998), Conan Chronicles Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon (2001), and Conan of Cimmeria: Volume Two (1934) (Del Rey, 2005). Translations exist in Japanese, Italian, Finnish, French, German, Swedish, Czech, Russian, Sinhalese, Spanish, and Polish.
Reception
Groff Conklin, writing about the Gnome Press edition, granted that the novel had "real merit" as a work of imagination, but judged Howard's prose as "only average [and] laden with bombast," recommending it to "those who like to lean back and read with their minds closed." L. Sprague de Camp, while conceding Howard was "an almost-very-good writer ... with limiting quirks," called the book "a sanguinary combination of sorcery, skulduggery, and swordplay." The front cover of the 1953 Ace D36 edition references this review, but highlights the phrase "A Must for Those Who Revel in ... Sorcery, Skulduggery, and Swordplay." In the 1977 edition's afterword, Karl Edward Wagner declared the novel "one of Howard's best pieces of writing -- and as one of the best novels ever written in the epic fantasy genre," adding that "Howard is mature as a prose stylist -- varying his delivery from headlong fast-paced action, to passages of atmospheric prose-poetry."
Adaptations
The Hour of the Dragon has been adapted into comics multiple times. In 1974, Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, and John Buscema handled the first adaptation for Marvel. It appeared across Giant-Size Conan #1 through #4 and Savage Sword of Conan #8 and #10. The initial plan was to spread the adaptation over six issues, but Giant-Size Conan #4 ended up being the final full-color installment. The remaining story was finished in the black-and-white pages of Savage Sword of Conan #8 and #10. A later comic adaptation came from Dark Horse in 2012 with their Conan the Conqueror series, which started with this story. The publishing company Ablaze also adapted it in their Cimmerian comic series. Several amateur audiobook versions exist, including one by Morgan Saletta from 2009 to 2010 for SF Audio's Second Book Challenge, and another by Mark Nelson for LibriVox in 2013. A professional commercial audiobook runs eight and a half hours and is titled The Bloody Crown of Conan. It was first released by Trantor in 2009 and is now available through Audible. The 1997 film Kull the Conqueror takes its basic plot from The Hour of the Dragon, swapping Conan for Kull but keeping the core story of a barbarian king overthrown by an undead sorcerer.
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