Conan the Barbarian - Queen of the Black Coast

We follow Conan from a run-in with “civilized” law to his escape to the sea. From there it's on to piracy, pillaging, passion, and exploration of haunting ancient ruins.

We also get some insights into Conan’s bleak theology, the visions of the black lotus, and a show down with Lovecraftian horrors.

Transcript

Welcome Back And Pulp Origins

Michael Kentris 0:05

Hello and welcome back to Brothers Reading Books, your sci-fi fantasy genre podcast. We are your hosts, the Brothers Who Are Reading. I am Michael Kentris, and I'm joined as always by my delightful brother. Will Kentris. Hi Michael. Will hey, how's it going? It's going pretty well. How about you? You know, I'm uh I'm just getting over a little bit of a head cold, so I apologize to our listeners. If I sound more nasal than usual, I will try and mute myself for any coughs that come up. But uh but thanks for bearing with us as we continue our march through the Coon the Barbarian uh corporum. Corporum body of work. Corpus. There we go. What word am I trying to say? I'm not on any cough uh suppressants right now, so I don't have any anything to blame. But as we're going forward, today we have uh Queen of the Black Coast. We had tried to get it to it on a previous one and uh just ran a little bit out of time. So some of these quote unquote short stories are are fairly meaty, if you will. Yeah, I've never read any of like the publications that originally came in, those magazines, the weird fiction. But it does make me wonder, was it literally just like a handful of stories if they were all this long? I I had to think probably so. Although I'm sure there's varying lengths. But yeah, it does kind of make you wonder, you know, what what would have been like. Because I remember, you know, when we were kids, and I was one of those nerdy kids who I would get the monthly Nintendo Power magazine. Right. I know, right? And I would just be so excited because that would be like my only thing that I ever got in the mail, first of all, until the time I was like 16 or 17 years old. And I'd just be waiting every month because we didn't have the internet at our house until I was in high school, also. So there's like no way to get any like gaming news or anything like that except for whatever magazine you subscribe to. I know there were others at the time, but that was that was just we were a Nintendo household up until the PS1. But um it kind of makes you wonder, and I have read some people writing about those publications, and that a lot of the stories were, let's just say, a little uneven in terms of quality. So, you know, you weren't necessarily gonna get like a classic work of fiction in your mailbox every month. You might be getting some really bizarre, poorly written stuff, right? Because this was kind of like the like the Dickens model of things where you're you know, kind of getting paid by the word or the page as it were. So definitely, yeah, you do wonder what that would have been like. Like, oh, my my monthly weird fiction or strange tales is here.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 2:39

You know, getting like a you know, probably if you had an issue that had something by like Lovecraft and uh Howard in it, that's probably like a pretty, pretty banger issue there. I would have to imagine, but you know, you don't hear stories are great either, but Right, sure. And I mean fast forward to now, you know, there's only like a handful that have survived the test of time, so realistically, yeah, most of them were of of middling quality at best, likely. Yes, yes. So so yes, today we have Queen of the Black Coast. So we are getting a a different Conan once again. So we've had Conan the Thief, Conan the King, Conan the member of the war band, Conan the General, now we have Conan the Pirate. That's right. Conan joins the pirates in this one. That is the subsection of the first bit here. So you want to start us off, Will, what's what's going on? Yeah, absolutely. So we start off here with uh again, another kind of little poem describing where we are. So Believe green buds awaken in the spring, that autumn paints the leaves with somber fire. Believe I held my heart in violet to lavish

Conan Jumps Aboard To Escape

Michael Kentris 3:55

on one man my hot desire. The song of Baylit. How would how did you pronounce her name? That was that was pretty close, yeah. I mean Bellets, Baylit. It's like a little accent over the E. Yeah, or uh I don't even know what that mark is called. You know, that's my own ignorance. Little carrot.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Little carrot.

Michael Kentris 4:12

Yes. It's your math background coming out. So so yeah, uh we we start out with a a sum of passion and love, perhaps foreshadowing things to come. Right, right. So yeah, the scene is set, so we are on a dock. We have hooves drumming on the dock side, and Conan is basically fleeing to the ship that is in the process of setting sail. We kind of get here at the very end, you know, he is blackbearded, very much just the blackbearded brow individual that we get in each of these individual sections describing what he looks like. But uh yeah, he he rides his horse to the edge of the pier and springs from his saddle with a long leap, landing squarely on the mid-deck. Right. And so we get this interaction with the presumably the captain of the ship, you know, who invited you aboard, and he just like he's just like, go, get underway. Um, you know, we hear the intruder, who we obviously know is is Conan at this point, right? He's he's you know, armored, cloaked, he's got a big sword, red drops as he gestures, fling from his broadsword. And he's like, But we're bound for the coast of Cush. Then I'm for Cush. Push off, I tell you. So it's like, I don't care where you're going, like, let's go. And uh yeah, it's like, can you pay for your passage? Like, I pay my way with steel. By crumb, man. If you don't get underway, I'll drench this galley in the blood of its crew. Like, go or I'm gonna kill all of you. Right. I mean Sure. Absolutely. And as this is happening, we get a squad of horsemen and also quickly following him onto the pier who appear to be wielding bows, various crossbows as well, so he is in pursuit, or rather, he is being pursued. Right. So yeah, we get we get, as always, our description of our protagonist here. A tall, powerfully built figure in a black scale male Hauberk, burnished greaves and a blue steel helmet from which jutted bull's horns, highly polished. From the mailed shoulders fell the scarlet cloak blowing in the sea wind, a broad chagreen belt with a golden buckle held the scabbard of the bronze sword he bore. Under the horn helmet, a square cut black mane contrasted with smoldering blue eyes. Can't forget that. So it was always, as as we've mentioned before, always the, you know, black hair, blue eyes. Uh always smoldering, burning, you know, something incandescent. It's funny, because like smoldering I always kind of assume with like a romantic context. So it's it's an interesting descriptor here, I think. Right, which you know, I I can get it. There's a a heat to his glance, if you will, an intensity. Absolutely. So we learn that our our captain here is named Tito Taito. He's a master shipman from Argos, and he is bound for a cush to trade beads, silks, sugar, brass hilted swords to the black kings for ivory, copra, which I assume must be like copper, like cuprum, if you will. Copper ore, slaves, and pearls. So, you know, he's uh he's not necessarily like the the most upright guy. But uh I think it's uh one thing to think about, right? So

Trade, Slavery, And Hyborian Reality

Michael Kentris 7:25

when we talk about like Hyboria or you know, the this this era, it's supposed to be kind of like pre prehistory to an extent. So we've had a couple stories, and we get it again in this one, where we have uh let's just say a less than stellar depiction of black-skinned people. And obviously we have mention here of slavery. So this is very much like part and parcel of this world. And uh I think it's it's important to remember from a like a historical context that uh context that that most slavery in the like the prehistoric world wasn't necessarily race-based. It was more conquest-based. So you had people from every country being enslaved. It's it's definitely something that uh probably would be expected in kind of a prehistoric society or a pre-prehistoric context. Not that that makes it good. But uh what are your thoughts on that, Will? Uh I mean, I definitely agree. Like just in the general setting of this world, like you said, we are kind of doing these conquests, these sort of campaigns against other nations, and you know, usually you're not going to go ahead and just kill everybody. It's literally just like, alright, now you're gonna come instead of work for them, you're gonna come work for me, and you're gonna farm and do all sorts of medium tasks and stuff. So Right. So yeah. Uh so I think we can all agree slavery's bad. Yes. And uh again, right, a description of it is not an endorsement of it. So we'll just leave it at that and continue on with our story. So he he names himself, right? He is Conan, a Sumerian, and he's like, So this I thought was a great story. Why are these guardsmen chasing you? Right, I do love this. So yeah, Conan relays the story. I have nothing to conceal by Krom, though I spent considerable time among you civilized peoples. Your ways are still beyond my comprehension. Well, last night at a tavern, a captain, the king's guard, offered violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier who naturally ran him through. But it seems there is some cursed law against killing guardsmen, and the boy and his girl fled away. And so basically he gets kind of subpoenaed into this court to be like, hey, where did they go? And I could not betray him. Then the court waxed wroth, and the judge talked a great deal about my duty to the state and society and other things I did not understand, and bade me tell where my friend had flown. By this time I was becoming wrathful myself, for I explained my position. But I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then seeing they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge's skull. Then I cut my way out of the court, and seeing the high constable stallion tide nearby, I rode for the wharfs where I thought to find a ship bound for foreign parts. Fantastic. Yeah, that's that's just great. And then I love I love the uh Tito Tito's part response here. It's like, yeah, the courts kind of suck. I get it. Yeah, nobody's like, oh yeah, yeah, they're all so upright. I love this description where Conan's just like, you know, I'm not betraying my buddy, and you know, screw these judges. And he just like, yeah. Um, he does what barbarians do and uh executes the spirit of the law, if you will. So, you know, he's on this ship, and we learn that this ship is named the Argus. Is this just like a loose reference, right? We think of Argos or uh this it kind of has like a Hellenic kind of implication here. We think of like the Argonauts also.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Absolutely.

Michael Kentris 11:10

So maybe, maybe there's a reference there. It's probably very loose, just like a boat. I don't think there's any significance uh to that though. Not that I could tell from as the story continues. Yes. So we kind of get this little description as uh the boat's going on, it's got some sails, it's got some, you know, rows or oars, with four men to row at, and um, you know, it's a it's a merchant ship, it's got cargo, nothing too crazy, I don't think, here. And then as we're going we get little descriptions of the lands that they're passing here. So you first get the the coast of Shem, right, with these the horsemen with their blue black beards and hooked nose that she did not put in. There was scant profit in trade with the sons of Shem. Similarly then they uh pull into the broad bay where the Styx River emptied its gigantic flood into the ocean, and the black castles of Kemi loomed over the blue waters. Ships did not put unassed into this port where dusky sorcerers wove awful spells in the murk of sacrificial smoke. So yeah, we've had all these like, you know, Stygian wizards in past stories here, so we know that's like kind of one of these kind of spooky areas where they worship the old god sets, and it's kind of like bad vibes, if you will. All right, some human sacrifice, never use it. Just a little bit. Yes. And so yeah, they're uh they're driving by, driving by, sailing by. Even when they see this a serpent proud gondola coming out, and they've got these um, you know, naked, brazen women on deck, kind of siren-esque, trying to lure the sailors back there. So they continue on and they they keep going, and they are now along the coasts of Kush. And so so we kind of know that Howard kind of takes some of his names from real-world areas, right? So the the Cush was like kind of like this area in Africa, broadly speaking. So it kind of has some of those characteristics, I think, as far as like it's to the south, people there are darker skinned, and yeah. That's about all I got so far. That's fair. That's fair. Then we get like a little contrast here between the Argosian sailors and the Conan, the northern barbarian. So we get these uh short, stockily built, no two of them could match Conan's strength. They were hardy and robust, but his was the endurance and vitality of a wolf. His fuse stealed. Sorry, you always have to mention the fuse. What is a theu for those? So in my mind, it's always like the like the muscular part of like the thigh. Okay, okay. Maybe the arms as well, but I always think of it as like thighs. He's got he's got sturdy thighs. He's got tree trunk thighs. That's right. So yeah, uh, that would be my my take on a theew. But but yeah, it's generally I think it's it's like the meaty part of your arms and legs, more or less.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Okay.

Michael Kentris 14:11

Sure. So but yeah, I like this. He was a valiant trencherman. Now, Will, do you know what a trencherman is? I don't. It makes me think of like the soldiers who dealt with trench warfare, but something tells me that's not correct here. No, no. It is actually someone who is able to eat well. Okay. So now now you and I would uh read the Redwall books way back in the day, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 14:42

And I believe that uh Brian Jacques would use this term as well, where he would trench in. Um, and that would be like like kind of like tucking in, if you will. So so basically it's kind of like this reference to like being able to, you know, eat a lot at the table, you know, kind of like if you think like your medieval like table board, if you will. Okay. So yes, uh, you can kind of get it from context. He was a valiant trenchman and strong drink was a passion and a weakness. So naive as a child in many ways, unfamiliar with the sophistry of civilization. So So yes. Uh and then we get a little bit of description of his gear here, which I like. It kind of tells you, you know, he's uh he's been all over the world here, or the world of Hyborea. His horn helmet was such as worn by the golden haired Aseir of Nordheim. His Hauberk and Greaves were the finest workmanship of Coth. The fine ringmail which sheathed his arms and legs was of Numidia. The blade at his girdle was a great aquilonian broadsword, and his gorgeous scarlet cloak could have been spun nowhere but in Ophir. So kind of all over that region there. Probably worldly. He's been around. And I think this is also useful inasmuch as it we talked in some of our earlier episodes about the the order of events, right? We'll kind of get this back and forth in time with some of these stories. So this can tell us like he's been to these places, so some of these tales would definitely have already occurred, most likely, given that we he has these um treasures from these various areas. So anyway,

The Tigress Hunts The Argus

Michael Kentris 16:10

so we finally get to a village in Cush, and they found a basically a smoking ruin littered with bodies, and they find this uh, as they describe them here, naked black bodies. So we we are in an area where the population is black, and it looks like they've all been murdered. And Tito basically says this is the work of pirates, and Conan loosens his great blade, and if we meet them, and so it's like we run, not fight, this is no warship. So important to remember, right, this is a trading vessel, so it's definitely not equipped for fighting. Although, like many ships in real-world equivalence, there would have been a need to fight off pirates, so a lot of times there are some some rudimentary weapons. And so they say this was Bellet's Tigress. And who is Bellet, Will? She is the wildest shoe devil on Hanged. Yes. But yeah, they they refer to her again as the titular Queen of the Coast. She is a Shemite woman who leads black raiders. They harry the shipping and have sent many a good tradesmen to the bottom. Yes, yeah, like this. Little use to resist if we're run down, he grunted, but it rasps the soul to give up life without a struggle. So so yes, it's like basically she she kills people. And as they're going here, we get a little jump in time just at sunrise when the lookout shouted a warning, and he sees a long, lethal-shaped, slender, serpentine galley with a raised deck that ran from stem to stern. And we get a low rail sworn with naked blacks that chanted and clashed spears on oval shields, which pirate ship closing in on them. And so Tito's plan is to beach the ship and escape into land, if possible. So they're they're trying to make their escape here. Needless to say, that is not how things play out. So we get this this is basically the ship race, and they're starting to row, and uh, you know, we can't have a Conan story without someone calling someone else dogs. So Tito roars, bend to it, dogs, yelling at his uh shipmen to basically row for their lives. And, you know, what they start firing some arrows off here. Conan grabs a bow himself and starts firing back some arrows and takes out a few of the pirates on the deck. And yeah, they are kind of uh, you know, we we get this ratcheting tension here as the ship closes

Conan’s Battle Frenzy Meets Belit

Michael Kentris 18:35

in here. And so we get uh this description of Bellatir, whose white skin glistened in dazzling contrast to the glossy Ebbenhides about it. So, you know, she's this this one white woman in troll of a pirate ship full of black men, essentially. Yes. Okay. We'll just we'll just leave it at that. Yes. That's the story, folks. But uh but yeah. So we uh we have Conan here, and he thinks about shooting her with the bow and arrow, but for you know, he like uh has a moment of hesitation and shoots uh shoots one of the uh pirates near her instead. What do you make of that? Seems like he faltered. So so essentially, right, the the ships you know, the the tigress bless you, the tigress catches up and we start getting ship-to-ship combat. The fight on the Argus was short and bloody. The stocky sailors were no match for the tall barbarians and were cut down to a man. And so obviously, Conan, being twice as strong as any single Argosian shipman, does not go down so easily. So we get this description here, and uh he is the center of a hurricane of stabbing spears and lashing clubs. Spears bent on his armor or swished empty air, and his sword sang its death song. The fighting madness of his race was upon him, and with a red mist of unreasoning fury wavering before his blazing eyes, he cleft skulls, smashed breasts, severed limbs, ripped out entrails, and littered the deck like a shambles with a ghastly harvest of brains and blood. So Conan Yes, yeah. A whirlwind of death. A whirlwind of right, typical fighting form for uh our good man Conan here. Invulnerable in his arm and his in his armor, his back against the mast, he heaped mangled corpses at his feet until his enemies gave back, panting in rage and fear. So so they were basically like poised, all of the all of the spearmen were poised to cast at him, and then Billet sprang before them, beating down their spears. Sorry, this is this is a little over the top here, but uh she turned toward Conan, her bosom heaving, her eyes flashing, fierce fingers of wonder caught at his heart. She was slender, yet formed like a goddess, at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Sumerian's pulse, even in the panting fury of battle. Um this is this is the purplest of purple pros, yeah. Um gosh, whenever you I don't know this this isn't explicit technically, I guess, but just like the globes of her breasts. You know, do you remember like this might be dating myself a little bit, but like in 40-year-old virgin where he's like, you know, like a bag of sand. Yes. Right. No, it it definitely uh yeah. The the verbiage used to describe her figure is a little crass in my opinion. Right. And yeah, he was in his late twenties probably when he wrote this. So he was well, yeah, he didn't live much past thirties. Early mid thirties, right? Yeah. So uh so yeah, uh I I definitely think this is intended for a young male audience. And uh let's just say there is a certain appeal to to that description.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yes.

Michael Kentris 22:06

So one phrase that we're going to come across again and again in this story is a she panther. She was untamed as a desert wind, supple and dangerous as a she panther. She came close to him, heedless of his great blade, wink wink, dripping with the blood of her warriors. So right, there's there's like a lot of like they're just ratcheting up the sexual tension in this encounter here to like eleven. So she's like, Who are you? She demanded by Ishtar, I have never seen your like. And uh he's like, from Argos, and he's basically she's like, You are no soft Hyborian. You are fierce and hard as a grey wolf. Those eyes were never dimmed by city lights, those thews were never softened by life amid marble walls. I am Coden, a Sumerian. Ooh, exotic. So so yeah, to right, so she's she's from Shem, she's mostly working in Kush, so they're in the far south right now. And uh so this is like, you know, the Aesir, Vanir, Sumerians, these are all like, you know, near mythical type countries. Uh I think so. With the unerring instinct of the elemental feminine, she knew she had found her lover. I do like her response. And I am Baylet, she cried as one might say. I am queen. Yes. So look at me, Conan, I am Belet Queen of a It's so weird, right? Like, so basically he's he's cut down like dozens of her warriors, and she's like she's hot for it. Oh yeah. Take me and crush me with your fierce love. Right. So he essentially accepts her offer, and uh as they say here, his barbaric soul stirred within him to quest these shining blue realms with that white-skinned young tiger cat to laugh, love sorry, it's like live, laugh, love. No, love, laugh, wander, and pillage. So it's like I'm just gonna say, like, I I did enjoy this story, but the beginning of it was ridiculous. It's it's more in the second half that it becomes, I would say, more of like a traditional, like, kind of sword and sorcery type story. Absolutely. This beginning is is it is over the top and ridiculous. Yes. Not that I didn't enjoy it for that. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's a fun time, again, just Conan doing his dance of death with you know, being unbested by any man. And I I felt a little bad for Taito, Tito, ship captain. You seemed like an alright guy. He's as far as you know, ship captains dealing. Who engage in slavery, yeah. As far as that goes. It seemed like he treated the crew decently well. So the fact that it's like, well, they're all dead, so I guess I'll join you. Right, gotta make the best of it, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Right.

Michael Kentris 24:58

So as they go on here, right, they throw basically all the dead from both the Argos and their own dead pirates overboard into the ocean, grab up the plunder, and they set off. So Bellet comes to the poop. So for those who aren't the poop deck, if you will, right? So this is this is part of the shift. Yeah, I'm not that I'm a nautical encyclopedia over here, but uh just for those who aren't familiar. Right. So her eyes were burning. Like what, Will? What were eyes burning like? You could say like a tiger cat, but I think a sheepanther would be more accurate in this case. That's right. It is a sheep anther in the dark, right? As she tore off her ornaments, sandals, and her silken girdle and cast them at his feet. Rising on tiptoe, arms outstrepped outstretched upward, a quivering line of naked white, she cried to the desperate horde, Wolves of the Blue Sea, behold ye now the dance, the maiden dance of Ballot, whose fathers were kings of Ascalon. So she does a dance here in front of Conan, I presume naked. Yes. And at the end, the blind flood of the Sumerians' desire swept all us away as he crushed her panting form against the black plates of his corseleted breast. So he's still in his armor here. Yeah, it is not, he is not dressed down. So that is the end of

The Maiden Dance And A New Life

Michael Kentris 26:20

the first section here. Yes. So part two The Black Lotus. In that dead citadel of crumbling stone, her eyes were snared by that unholy sheen, and curious madness took me by the throat as of a rival lover thrust between from the song of Bellet. Oh, here is that we have more mystical flowers. The black lotus. Yes, a black lotus. Right, which has shown up in several of our prior stories now for various conjuring needs. Does make me wonder if there's any significance to lotuses or flowers in general to Robert Howard? Robert, yes. I know I kept getting them mixed up with Frank Herbert from our previous series. It's like it's it's RH, right? You know, we'll just call them R. H. But uh yes, so there probably is. I know the Victorians are really big into like the significance of flowers. Like you could send a I think this shows up in some of the like Victorian and Edwardian literature, where if you sent a bouquet to somebody or somebody had a flower left with a note, it would have like some sort of significance. I'm not particularly well versed in that, but it it was a practice at the time. Okay. As far as I have heard of it, not familiar with it. Right, right. I'm aware that it existed. Yes. So we come now to our next pit. So they're

Poison River And Jungle Dread

Michael Kentris 27:45

coming to this river Zarkiba, which is death. That's a capital D death. Its waters are poisonous. See how dark and murky they run. And she's talking about a Stygian galley that had fled from her, went up the river, and vanished. And eventually the galley came floating down, decks bloodstained and deserted. Only one man was on board and he was mad and died gibbering. And she says, Lava, I believe there's a city somewhere on that river. I have heard tales of giant towers and walls glimpsed afar off by sailors who dared go part way up the river. We fear nothing, Conan. Let us go and sack that city. Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Right? He's just he's just there for the pillaging, you know? He's just the muscle. He's like, yeah, whatever you want, babe. Right, basically. You know, he's he's basically her strong sword arm side piece here. Right. He is the what is it, king consort?

unknown 28:37

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 28:38

The Lord Consort. More or less, yes. So they make their way up here. We get this description of the river here. So they they bust out the oars here, point against the current, and it was a sluggish flow, avoiding sandbars. They didn't see any four-legged beast or winged bird coming down to the water's edge to drink. And so they they just hear as the night, what they call it, solid palisades of darkness. I like that. Very like strong, impenetrable darkness, if you will. Yes, yes, absolutely. Mysterious rustlings, stealthy footfalls, the gleam of grim eyes. Once an inhuman voice was lifted in awful mockery, the cry of an ape, Ballad said, adding that the souls of evil men were imprisoned in these manlike animals as punishment for past crimes. But Conan doubted for once, in a gold barred cage in a Hyrcanian city he had seen an abysmal sad eyed beast, which men told him was an ape, and therein about it not of the demoniac malevolence which vibrated in the shrieking laughter that echoed from the jungle. So, you know, a bit of a bit of a doubt from Conan here about uh her her ape knowledge. He's been to menageries, he's seen stuff, right? Uh I like this. Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm of horror, and uh again, this kind of makes me think. I I have these mental images sometimes here. If you uh if any of our listeners had played Final Fantasy VII or VIII, uh the protagonists from those two video games are renowned for their shrugs as their only

Conan On Gods And Living

Michael Kentris 30:10

answer. You know, what's the squalls thing? Uh whatever. Yes. Yes. So, Conan, do you fear the gods? I would not tread on their shadow, answered the barbarian conservatively. Some gods are strong to harm, others to aid, at least so say their priests. Mitra of or Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong god because his people have builded their cities over the world, but even the Hyborians fear set, and Bel, god of thieves, is a good god. When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him. I like this, we get a little bit about Krom here. What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them. Their chief is Krom. He dwells on a great mountain. What used to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you. He will send you dooms, not fortune. He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall man ask of the gods? Again, getting a little more glimpse into Conan's view of his religion. Right. Basically it's like, don't piss them off and try and stay out of their sights. Right. Yeah, it's a very grim religion, hurry. There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people, answered Conan. In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle, dying their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity. So let's let's unpack that for just a second. So it's it's a very kind of Hellenistic pagan view of the underworld, yeah? Inasmuch as like when we think of Hades, we think of like our modern kind of well, I shouldn't say modern, like kind of medieval version of hell with like, you know, fire and pitchforks and all that. But but in reality, Hades as like a kind of classical concept was more of this like dim realm of shades where you just kind of wandered around until you were forgotten, and then you kind of dispersed kind of uh in the stoic sense, like as a mist, if you will. So so I would say this is like a very classical view of of the afterlife. And then we have, if we kind of look at the parallels of that, you know, we had the the Tartarus for the the gods and those who P.O.'d the gods, and then the uh Elijah and Fields, which was like a slightly better afterlife, um, like the the realm of heroes and so on. And similarly, if we look at like the the Norse mythology version of the afterlife, we kind of have the same thing, right? Where there's hell with a single L, um, which was kind of probably more akin to what we think of as like the fire torture kind of setup. Okay. And then you had like Valhalla for the those who died in battle and all that kind of stuff. So we don't even have that uh kind of thing here, right? This is a very grim end. It seems like everybody goes there, at least. Yeah, it doesn't matter what you do. Doesn't matter. But uh but yeah, we kind of get this little bit of philosophy here. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness avered by the Namidian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted hole vaulted hulls of the Nordheimers Valhalla. Oh, there we go. But yeah, we get this little waxing philosophical ear. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live. Let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades aflame and crimson and I am content. But teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this, if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content. So so yeah, definitely uh a lot of existential kind of stuff in there as far as, you know, is life is this a real life? Is this just fantasy? Um But so yeah, there's definitely kind of like a Cartesian element to that, you know, that cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Okay, sure. And it's like uh, well, at the very least there must be a thinker, but it doesn't say anything about the thinker of those thoughts. So kind of interesting, you know, it's a little more philosophical than we would expect from a story like this. Absolutely. From what one would expect of Conan. Right, right. He thinks thoughts, but he also thinks that sometimes those thoughts aren't helpful, and he stops thinking them. But we get this little bit of foreshadowing here from Belleth, there is life beyond death, I know, and I know this too, Conan of Sumeria. My love is stronger than any death, and uh dot dot dot. Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back from the abyss to aid you. I am yours, and all the gods and all their eternities shall not sever us. Hmm. So I'm sure that won't come up. No, no, never. So anyway, nice little bit of foreshadowing here. We get this conversation is interrupted by a scream, and uh we realize it is a gigantic serpent that has glided up and grabbed one of our quote luckless warriors in its jaws. Its dripping scales shone leprously in the moonlight as it reared its form high above the deck. Conan rushed into the bows, and swinging his great sword he hewed nearly through the giant trunk, which was thicker than a man's body. Conan just being, you know, continues to be BA as always. And yeah, still gripping its victim, it thrashed out of the water. So bloody foam in which man and reptile vanished together. So they continue up, and you know, after that Conan kept the watch himself. And they eventually come to

Ruined City Treasure And Traps

Michael Kentris 35:50

a ruin here, a ruined city.

unknown 35:52

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 35:52

It was but the ghost of a city on which they looked when they cleared a jutting jungle clad point and swung in toward the encurving shores. So yeah, there had once been streets and spacious plazas and broad courts from all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green. Yeah, everything in this jungle just seems deadly. That's it seems to be one of the re uh points that RH makes here. Like, hey, everything's gonna kill ya. The water's gonna kill ya, the fauna's gonna kill ya, and now with this poisonous green, the flora is also gonna kill ya. Yes. So again we get a little bit of a foreshadowing here. In the center space a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column, and on its pinnacle sat or squatted something that Conan supposed to be an image, until his keen eyes detected life in it. And uh there's like like a superman kind of thing right here.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Absolutely.

Michael Kentris 36:52

It's a great bird. It's a monster bat. It is an ape, said Bellet. Just then the creature spread broad wings and flapped off into the jungle. A winged ape, said old Nayaga uneasily. Better we had cut our throats than come to this place. It is haunted. And then Bellet mocks him for his superstitions and orders the galley to go inshore to the wharf. So overall brooded a silence as sinister as that of a sleeping serpent. So yeah, we get this there's definitely some haunted vibes going on here, right? We get some weird, you know, winged ape monster on the top of some giant marble pyramid, uh, and this sil right, 'cause we're in the middle of a jungle, right? They should be filled with life, and it is just quiet. So definitely uh it's one of those things like from a movie where it's like it's like, do you hear that? It's too quiet. Quiet. Too quiet, yes. So as they go in here, we get a massive altar that Bellet examines here, and she says this is the temple of the old ones. You can see the channels for the blood along the sides of the altar, and the rains of ten thousand years have not washed the dark stains from them. And Conan asks, Who were these old ones? And she she spreads her slim hands helplessly, not even in legendary as this city mentioned, but look at the hand holes on either side of the altar. Priests often conceal their treasures beneath their altars. Four of you lay hold and see if you can lift it. So we get some of our pirates poppin' up here, they grip the handholds, and like this, curiously unsuited to human hands. When Bellet sprang back with a sharp cry, they froze in their places, and uh Conan looks at her as a snake in the grass, she said, Come and slay it, the rest of you bend your backs to the stone, which we find out uh she has her reason for for this. Maybe she's not as loyal to her crew as they are to them. No, for not at all. The only one's hundred percent. So all of a sudden the altar revolves and there was a grinding rumble, and the tower came crashing down, covering the four men with broken masonry. A cry of horror arose from their comrades, and she whispers to Cona, There was no serpent. It was but a ruse to call you away. Uh I feared the old ones guarded their treasure well. Let us clear away the snow. Basically, she didn't want him to get crushed, and she thought there was going to be a trap, and she didn't tell anybody else. So they were disposable. Yeah, right. I mean, she does kind of give that vibe about about things. Yeah. So so yes, very much so. At first glance, the crypt seemed brimming with liquid fire, catching the early light with a million blazing facets. Undreamable wealth lay before the eyes of the gaping pirates, diamonds, rubies, bloodstones, sapphires, turquoises, moonstones, opals, emeralds, amethysts, unknown gems that shone like the eyes of evil women. The crypt was filled to the brim with bright stones that the morning sun struck into lambent flame. Very, very poetic. A lot of gems there, it would sound like. Right. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the Tower of the Elephant, which is like how much wealth is overflowing here. Right, like an obscene amount of wealth. More than a sane mind could comprehend. That's that's right. And and Bellad here, yeah, she does. She cries out and she like basically like shoves her arms shoulder deep into the pool of splendor. And she pulls out a long string of crimson stones that were like clots of frozen blood strong on a thick gold wire. In fact, their glow was so much that they changed the sunlight to a bloody haze. So some some powerful language here, I I would say, in terms of the description of things. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, she kind of falls into this trance. Uh the Shemite soul finds a bright drunkenness enriches the material splendor, and the sight of this treasure might have shaken the soul of the sataned emperor of Shushan. Take up the jewels, dogs, her voice for Shrillethur emotions. Yeah. And we get one of one of our guys shouts out, Look, and they see a dark shape soaring away from the ship. And they say, The devil ape has been investigating the ship. Make a litter, and she's like, What does it matter? Make us a litter of spears to bear these jewels. I was like, Where the devil are you going? And to look to the galley, grunted Conan. That bat thing might have knocked a hole in the bottom for all we know. So so yes, we we get down there and basically find out that the so she's like covered herself in jewels. And uh while he's been gone, and he they find out that he has staved in the water casks, right? And we know the the river water is poison, so there is there's no water to drink. You can't go very long with no water, especially in a jungle. So they he takes twenty men, looks for some fresh water in the jungle, and she's like, very well, like not paying attention, I'll get the loot aboard. So as as they go on there, he goes with this uh sub chief, Nagora, and they they have this group of spearmen marching into the distance. And Conan smells something alien and exotic, and he turns and one of these has touched him, and he recognizes the Black Lotus, whose juice was death and whose scent brought dream haunted slumber. He sought to lift his sword to hew down the serpentine stalks, but his arm hung lifeless at his side. He opened his mouth to shout to his warriors, but only a faint rattle issued, and basically he passes out. He did not hear the screams that burst out awfully not far away. End of section two. That's

Black Lotus Dreams And Ancient Doom

Michael Kentris 42:35

right. On to section three. On to section three. The horror in the jungle. Was it a dream the night lotus brought? Then cursed the dream that brought that bought my sluggish life, and cursed each laggard hour that does not see, hot blood drip blackly from the crimsoned knife, the son of Bilit. First there was the blackness of an utter void with the cold winds of cosmic space blowing through it, then shapes vague, monstrous, and avanescent, rolled in dim panorama through the expanse of nothingness as if the darkness were taking material form. Like very Lovecraftian type language here, and he kind of gets these visions. Cast in the mold of humanity, they were distinctly not men, they were winged and of heroic proportions, not a branch on the mysterious stalk of evolution that culminated in man, but the ripe blossom on an alien tree, separate and apart from that stalk. Apart from their wings and physical appearance, they resembled man only as man in his highest form resembles the great apes. In spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual development they were superior to man, as man is superior to the gorilla. But when they reared their colossal city, man's primal ancestors had not yet risen from the slime of the primordial seas. I like this. After uncounted millions of years, the change began. That's a capital C change, and we kind of get these it sounds kind of like like Pangea type changes, like the shifting of the continents and the sea tables and all this kind of stuff. Somewhere on the planet, the magnetic centers were shifting, which, you know, this like for someone back right in the 1920s, 1930s to be writing about this in the middle of like nowhere, Texas, is kind of impressive. Right. Because we know, right, we have these magnetic centers and that they do shift like on a period of tens of thousands of years. So how wild is that? That you know it's one of those things where you kind of get these like sci-fi fiction authors who they have like, you know, by by chance or by some sort of insight, they they talk about these things. I was like, yeah, that that is a thing, you know? Absolutely. No, it is very much like the similar feeling I had with uh Frank Herbert and Dune, just like the amount of research that must have gone into it to get all that information to kind of integrate into his work that you know we take for granted nowadays, where it's like, yeah, if I want to know something, I can just search for it and boom, I've got the world's knowledge at my fingertips. But absolutely. Back in the 30s, geez. Right. You know, if you're lucky there's a public library nearby. But yeah, very, very interesting. So anyway, so we get all this kind of thing, you know, lands sink into the deep, you know, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes convulsing the ground, blah, blah, blah, right? All your typical kind of end of world type of change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so we get this as as these changes, right, their their water source becomes contaminated. Many who died, who drank of it uh died. Those who lived had a subtle, gradual, and grisly change. They who had been winged gods became pinioned demons, with all that remained of their ancestors' vast knowledge distorted and perverted and twisted into ghastly paths. So it kind of gives those echoes of like this kind of like, you know, cathodic change, right? Something from the deep corrupts and changes those who were more elevated in the past. So we get this, as I said, this kind of perversion of of nature. Right. Yeah, I like this next part. As they had risen higher than mankind might dream, so they sank lower than man's man as nightmares reach. They died fast by cannibalism and horrible feuds fought out in the murk of the midnight jungle, and at last among the lichen grown ruins of their city, only a single shape lurked, a stunted abhorrent perversion of nature. Yes. And so now we finally get mankind on the scene, so the warriors of prehistoric stygia, fifty of them haggard, gaunt with starvation. And so they lay down among the ruins and fall asleep, and a hideous shape crept red eyed from the shadows and performed weird and awful rites about and above each sleeper. Then the moon went down and the eyes of the necromancer were red jewels set in the ebony night. There were no men when dawn spread its white veil over the river, only a hairy winged whore that squatted in the center of a ring of fifty great spotted hyenas. So you get some sort of weird shape-changing kind of thing, again kind of very reminiscent of a lot of myths, think of like Cerxes in the Odyssey, you know, changing Odysseus's men into animals, that kind of stuff. But a pretty common trope from mythology. And as this goes on, eventually, Conan realizes that he is dreaming, and suddenly the sheen scene shifts, and he sees Nagora and the other spearmen, and then he realizes that they threw away their weapon weapons, raced wildly through the jungle, pressed close by the slavering monstrosity that flapped its wings above them. Yeah, so seems like Conan got a little bit of uh historical lesson in the sleep-inducing embrace of the Black Lotus about the origins of this winged whore. Yeah. Yeah, very useful history lesson there for for us the readers. So we you know, he realizes that uh, you know, his his spearmen are in danger, panic rises in him at the thought that he had lain senseless for hours. He follows their tracks and spear, shields scattered about, as if dropped in flight, and so as he goes through, he comes abruptly to a hillside, breaks off in a sheer precipice forty feet high. Something crouched on the brink. At first he thought it was a great black gorilla, then he saw it was a giant black man crouched ape like, long arms dangling, froth dripping from the loose lips. It was not until with a sobbing cry the creature lifted huge hands and rushed toward him that Conan recognized Nagora. The black man gave no heed to Conan's shout as he charged, eyes rolled up to display the whites, teeth gleaming, face in inhuman mask. And so basically Conan cuts him down, and it's all silent there. So then he realizes that there was this like all the he looks over the jagged rocks below and he sees the rest of the the group of spearmen there, and just a huge cloud of flies, everybody's dead. So So he's motionless for a moment, and then he just like runs back toward their toward the uh the ruins and the the other group of people. Feel bad for Nagora there. He was definitely one of the first ones to be like, hey, we shouldn't we shouldn't come here. This is a bad idea. Yes. In the uh you know, if those who've played uh Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, you know, he failed a sanity failed a sanity check there. One too many times. Ugh, yeah, rough,

Belit’s Death And Conan’s Revenge

Michael Kentris 49:30

rough. So uh so he he gets back to the uh to the ruins here, and so he sees here and there among the stones were spots of raw, bright color as if a careless hand had splashed with a crimson brush. Again Conan looked on death and destruction. Before him lay his spearmen, nor do they rise to salute him. They lay torn, mangled, half devoured, chewed travesties of men, swarms of huge footprints like those of hyenas, and as he approaches the pier, above whose deck was suspended something that glimmered ivory white in the faint twilight. Speechless the Sumerian looked on the Queen of the Black Coast as she hung from the yard arm of her own galley. Between the yard and her white throat stretched a line of crimson clots that shone like blood in the gray light. So someone basically hung her to death by the necklace that she had put on earlier. So very a very macabre scene, right? Everyone essentially except Conan is dead. And we know there were there were dozens of men on this ship. I think it said around they had eighty men coming up this river initially, so that sounds about right. Yeah, yeah. Not uh not good. So End of part three, on to part four. The attack from the air. The shadows were black around him, the dripping jaws gaped white, thicker than rain the red drops fell, but my love was fiercer than death's black spell, nor all the iron walls of hell could keep me from his side. Not the best rhyming scheme. No. The Song of Bellet. So here's a question, real quick. Yeah. Since this seems like it's supposed to be one of those sort of internal world pieces of literature. Is this something that Conan composed or had somebody composed for him? You know, that is a great question. Who is the writer? Yeah, I would say if I had to guess, probably if we think of like old Conan, you know, telling stories, that this is probably something somebody composed based off of one of his stories. That would be what I would think. That's fair. I think that's fair. Because it does refer it's written kind of from the perspective of Bellad, right? Like that last line could keep me from his side. So it's definitely not written from Conan's perspective. So I would think it'd be somebody else who wrote it, would be my thought. I like this. The jungle was a black colossus, which our next episode, spoilers, is called the Black Colossus. So maybe just a phrase that's stuck in uh in his mind here. Yeah. I don't know. So we have Conan on the pyramid among the fallen towers, like an iron statue, chin propped on massive fists. And on the deck of the Tigris, a pier of broken benches, spear shafts, and leopard skins lay the Queen of the Black Coast in her last sleep, wrapped in Conan's scarlet cloak. He is his soul is full of black fury, and he it no longer doubted the visions of the Black Lotus. And he's like he now realizes that uh Nagor and his comrades had been terror stricken by the winged monster, had fallen over the cliff, and then the slaughter had been a massacre rather than battle, already unmanned by their superstitious fears. So so yeah, all pointed to a human or superhuman intelligence, the breaking of the water cast to divide the forces, the driving the spearman over the cliff, and last and greatest, the grim jest of the crimson necklace nodded like a hangman's noose about Bellet's white neck. Having apparently saved the Sumerian for the choicest victim and extracted the last ounce of exquisite mental torture. So yes, uh so basically Conan is like ready. He's like just ready to go down, you know, battle style here. Yeah, I do appreciate like the way he's kind of evaluating this is that uh he's like, alright, they've saved me for last. Right. So so now we've got uh twenty great spotted hyenas, and he's like, uh, well, the pirate's spears must have taken a toll after all, right? Because it was fifty in his vision. And so now we have Conan, he's got pulls out his bow and arrow, and he starts firing with his steely thews, backed by a hate hot as the slag heaps of hell. I like that line. That's a good line. So so yeah, as we go on here, um in his berserk fury he did not miss. The air was filled with feathered destruction. So he's he's firing as they're charging up this uh this pyramid. In my mind, it's kind of like a ziggurat kind of thing. Thinking this, you know, godless all coming. He knew he faced diabolism, blacker than the well of Skelos. So some sort of well of blackness. Maybe maybe it'll make sense at a different story. Maybe, maybe. So then they were upon him, his fiercely driven sword shore the first asunder. So basically he's just you know, he's ripping into them, you know, his I would have like this. He's dropping the sword useless at such deadly close quarters. He caught at the throats of the two horse which were ripping and tearing at him in silent fury. He was like basically choking these hyenas with his bare hands, right? It's it's impressive. Tears open the throat with his naked right hand, caught and broke its foreleg with his left. So so yeah, this is like a silent battle, right? A short yelp, the only cry in that grim battle, and hideously human like bursts from the maimed beast. So, you know, he's he's going on, he's he's kicking, punching, crushing, all the good stuff here. He hurled it from him to crash with bone smoltering force down the marble steps. So he's just you know, throwing him down the side of here, and all of a sudden we hear the thrash of bat wings loud in his ears. And he makes sure to get his sword for this fight. You're right, so he's not being swarmed. Yeah. Uh he groped for his sword, swung upright, braced his feet drunkenly, and heaved the great blade above his head with both hands, shaking the blood from his eyes as he sought the air above him for his foe. Yes. So so yeah, the instead of an attack, so the pyramid staggers, so he it crashes into the pyramid and kind of like unstabilizes the whole thing. And so he tries to leap out, and the pyramid crumples, and he is pinned by a great piece of column. And so as he's pinned there, he sees the silhouette going across the stars there, and it's like the winged one. It was ne a thing, neither man, beast nor devil, imbued with characteristics subhuman as well as characteristics superhuman. And so he throws himself at his sword, misses, and he's like trying to push this thing off of him. And as he's doing this, this this creature is rushing towards him, and now it towers over him, and then as it's about to descend on him, a glimmer of white flash between it and the victim. Um that is to say Conan. In what mad instant she was there, a tense white shape, vibrant with love, fierce as a Sheepanthers. She Panthers, yes. So he sees the blaze of her dark eyes, the thick cluster of her burnished hair, her bosom heaved, her road lips were parted. She cried out sharp and ringing as this ring of steel. Bellet screamed Conan, she flashed a quick glance toward him, and in her dark eyes he saw her love flaming a naked elemental thing of raw fire and molten lava. Then she was gone. And her passionate cry rings in his ears. Were I still in death and you fighting for life, I would come back from the abyss. So with that last reprieve of a moment, he's able to fling the stone off of him, grabs his sword, and he swings it, pivoting on his heel with the force of the sweeping arc, just above the hips it caught the hurtling shape, and the knotted legs fell one way, the torso another as the blade sheared clear through its hairy body. So he turns on his heel, goes down to the wharf, steps aboard the galley, cuts the ship adrift, and heads back to sea. So Conan leans on the sweep, somber gaze fixed on the cloak wrapped shape that lay in state on the pyre, the richness of which was equal to the ransom of an empress. The funeral pyre. Now we are done with roaming evermore, no more the oars the windy harps refrain, nor crimson pennon frights the dusky shore, blue girdle of the world receive again Her whom thou gavest me the song of Baylet. So yes, we we have Conan here at dawn, and then there is a redder glow lighting the river mouth. So he watched the tigress swinging out on her last voyage, and he basically sees like he is looking with revulsion at the ocean here, right? He's had his time at the sea, and without Bellet there, it is barren, dreary, and desolate. So no hand is the sweep of the tigress, no oars drove her through the green water, but a clean, tanging wind bellied her silken sails. She sped seaward, flames mounting higher and higher from her deck to lick at the mast and envelop the figure that lay lapped in scarlet on the shining pier. So past the Queen of the Black Coast, and leaning on his red stained sword, Conan stood silently until the red glow had faded far out in the blue hazes and dawn splashed its rose and gold over the ocean. The end of the Queen

Final Thoughts On Two Halves

Michael Kentris 58:55

of the Black Coast. So, Will, what are your thoughts? That one I felt like like you said, it had very two distinct parts. It was pre-Baylit and then post-Baylit, where the first half was kind of, yeah, over the top silly. And then the second half was much more like the unknowable horror that lurks in the ruins that has driven people insane. Right, right. So so yeah, I I definitely would would agree. Like I could get it maybe maybe if we were younger, right? I I just uh celebrated my fortieth birthday, so I am now officially middle-aged. And uh yes, I have I have survived only halfway there. But uh you know, and and you will are in your thirties, so we're not, you know, in our teens and twenties any longer. Perhaps we would feel differently about about that. Like twenty years ago. Could just be our temperament. So but that being said, I do know that um people have written, smarter people than me, about like romance novels and what men find, let's just say engaging. Engaging from a romantic perspective versus what women do. And it it definitely has that kind of a flavor there, you know, where it's kind of like a fierce, passionate kind of description there and you know, very purplish prose. But I don't hate it, but I I do think it's a little goofy. You know, I know we touched on some of the it's definitely it it is a product of its time, and I think that's that's a common criticism in some of his writing. So that being said, you know, I don't I don't endorse it. I can understand why why he would write that way, being from a small Texas background, perhaps. But yeah, uh that being said, I enjoy obviously the the fighting part of it more with the supernatural horrors and kind of the weird uh pre-mythical, prehistorical kind of visions from the black lotus flowers in the jungle. But yeah. So so yeah, overall I I found it an enjoyable story. Um definitely different. I mean, the first part there uh where he was fleeing the courthouse, you know, I I also enjoyed. I do love the dialogue. I feel like the dialogue, especially on a lot of these stories, just shines a lot in kind of Conan's no nonsense, here's what I'm gonna be doing. Right, right. Yeah, it's it's very over-the-top, it's kind of got that larger-than-life flavor to it, which I mean that's kind of what what this is supposed to be about to an extent. It's like it's not supposed to be real. It's not real life. So I know uh Will and I have been talking because we're we're kind of working our way through classic fiction works, but we are also reading usually several books on the side. And so I thought it would be fun to have a little segment at the end where we talk about books that we've read recently that uh

Recent Reads And Listener Requests

Michael Kentris 1:01:50

we enjoyed. So, Will, do you want to start us off? Sure, absolutely. So I've been dabbling a little bit with uh Ursula Kaylee Gwynn recently. So I've I've read uh a decent amount of her Tales of Earth Sea. So I've read the first books in that, the first three books, and a friend recently recommended trying out some of her science fiction. So I know there's like Left Hand of Darkness and things like that, but the book that I read was The Word for World is Forest. And that one I believe was written kind of in response to like the Vietnam War, if I remember correctly. So, you know, we're following kind of these indigenous peoples who live on this Earth-like planet who are depicted as kind of being ape-like, and then we also, of course, have our Terran, as they're referred to here in this multi-planetary system, uh, kind of colonizers who are there to harvest wood and send back the wood to Earth, and just kind of the interaction we have between kind of this uh invasive peoples versus the indigenous peoples. And it was it was solid. I I did like it. Um I feel like a lot of Ursula's work is pretty short, which I do appreciate just in terms of digestibility. And I know you and I have talked about doing some of her stuff on here as well, so we probably will get around to that at some point. And I do also really like the way that she does a lot of her dialogue as well. It's it's it's very to the point. It doesn't necessarily like in direct contrast to Robert Jordan, I I in the middle of doing a reread, but I I just finished the fifth book a few months ago. And what is that? Fires of heaven? Fires of heaven, yeah. And there's like two things that happen in the entire book. It's like over six hundred pages. Just like, oh my gosh, I do not care what people are wearing. Tell me about the buttons on their coats. Right. The broccaded coats. It's just like Yeah, they spend a lot of time in carry-in in there, don't they? They do. Yeah. Yeah. They they love their broccade in carry-in. But yeah, uh, the word for Wolfreforest. Yeah, it was like less than 200 pages. It was it was solid. It was solid. Yeah, nice. So well, mine's not as highfalutin, but uh I recently read uh actually I read three books by the same author. Uh her name is uh Shamie Stoval, and I've read some of her works before. Because it was a new series that she had started, I think, in the last uh year or two. The first book is called The Time Locked Warlock, and it's uh it's an interesting take on magic systems. So you got like kind of wizards, warlocks, witches, that kind of stuff. But the the main character is a private investigator warlock character who can turn back time. And so there's some limitations on his time abilities, but uh it is a very interesting thing because you kind of have this replay of this one 24-hour period over and over again. So like if you ever thought, like, well, I wish I had done that conversation differently, and then like you kind of see that play out like sometimes several times. And so it's a really interesting take where there'll be, you know, first he'll go to like one location and then he'll like reset time. So he'll go back to that, and then it'll go to a different place. And so he's able to like be in different places and gather up this information and kind of affect things in certain ways. So it's a really, I think, uh a neat take on like the private eye mystery kind of story. And um yeah, it's it's been very enjoyable. You know, he's kind of like crusty private eye, and I like it because he is, I believe, 39 years old in the story. So I empathize with his character a little bit more. But uh but you know, it's kind of like got some of those elements of like found family, and you know, over the series he develops relationships with these other characters, and it's all very nice. It's kind of like a A um less dark kind of Harry Dresden type vibe. Okay. So so I I found it very enjoyable so far. There's three books in this series thus far, and they've all been pretty good, you know, very interesting mysteries, good evolution of the characters. Like they do change over time. You don't get this kind of episodic thing where it's the same thing. You know, the characters are the same book to book. They do show growth and all that. So they've been very good. I've enjoyed them for a nice kind of leisurely read. And uh some some amusing, I'd say interesting takes on kind of time travel as an investigative kind of thing. Nice. Yeah, it's always interesting to see how people do time travel because I feel like if you don't have a strong internal system, it's very easy to be like, well, there's so many plot holes. Like, you know, the time twist turners or whatever they're called, the Harry Potter, I don't know everybody has huge huge problems with those. Very true. Well, uh, and I should say, listeners, if you would like us to have full reviews of like books or anything like that as separate episodes, let us know. Otherwise, for now, we'll just continue kind of having a little blurb at the the end of our episodes, you know, probably every week, couple of weeks. You know, depending on on our uh reading habits, if you will. So we'll kind of talk about what we've been reading that's not kind of in the classics of the genre uh space. So let us know, and we will see you next week as we continue through Conan with the Black Columpsis. Alright, talk to you later, Will. Talk to you later, Mike.