Source: Broken Seas Audio
Length: Approx. 3.5 hrs
Reader: Mark Kalita

The book: Red Nails is the last-published of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian chronicles. The Conan stories, however, were not published in any chronological order: in one story Conan will have risen through the ranks to be a king, in another set years earlier he’s a lone wanderer, in others his employment is of a mercenary or pirate. The implication is that the Conan stories are all about one varied career, but the order of the telling is like a group of old tale-spinners sitting around topping each legend of the hero with another more astounding.

In this novella, Conan has deserted his mercenary regiment in pursuit of the beautiful pirate Valeria. He catches up with her in the jungle, where they join forces to evade a dinosaur (!) and seek refuge within the ruins of a ancient lost city. Here, they find the remnants of a decaying race, locked in a bitter feud that threatens to destroy the last of the city’s inhabitants.

The story has all the bloody fights and lurid innuendo that colored the pulp fiction of Howard’s day. Between these, Howard weaves a theme about the sapping effects of civilized life, which is contrasted with Conan’s bold strength and self-sufficiency. Although probably as much a fantasy as the Barbarian himself, this theme likely resonated with Howard’s readers, who lived in an America that believed itself to have traded in the romance of the frontier for the drudgery of the city.

Rating: 7/10

The Reader: Mark Kalita has a delivery somewhere between a campfire storyteller and 30′s radio announcer that suits this pulpy story so well. His Conan voice is all bragging heroism, while Valeria has a sarcastic pout that reflects her character. Some of the natives’ voices may be offensive to the politically-correct sensitive, but are in keeping with the spirit of Howard’s writing. The recording has a small amount of noise at the edit-points, but this is easily overlooked for an otherwise flawless production.