A grand adventure of the mighty thewed barbarian, from one of Fantasy’s biggest names

Conan, The name has inspired generations, one that resounds through time immemorial. Yet it all began with a handful of stories from Robert E. Howard. In the decades since, there have been feature films, television and comic book series, and numerous spin-off novels. In 1979, Poul Anderson—winner of a staggering eight Hugo and three Nebula Awards—wrote what is regarded as one of the finest adventures in the canon of Conan:

Conan the Rebel.

Conan the barbarian and Belit, his raven-haired beauty, lead a band of savage pirates striving to free Belit’s people from the iron grip of an evil reptile god and its cruel minions. Striking at the heart of tyranny, Conan must break the chains of oppression before eternal darkness claims them all.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

January 4, 2003
Dimensions

5.3 x 0.61 x 8.36 inches
ISBN-10

0765300737
ISBN-13

978-0765300737
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mighty barbarians, savage pirates, freedom, and tyranny are at the heart of this grand adventure.”--Realms of Fantasy

“Fans of Robert E. Howard’s immortal barbarian will rejoice in this handsome reappearance of Anderson’s classic.”--Publishers Weekly

“The late Poul Anderson, SFWA Grand Master and winner of a staggering array of literary awards, was a giant in the field of science fiction. His touch for altering reality and re-creating the universe was unequaled, and Conan the Rebel bears the unmistakable Anderson touch. Clever plot twists and building tension will keep readers on edge until the end.”—The Baton Rouge Advocate

About the Author

The bestselling author of such classic novels as Brain Wave and The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson won just about every award the science fiction and fantasy field has to offer. He has won multiple Hugos and Nebulas, the John W. Campbell Award, The Locus Poll Award, the Skylark Award, and the SFWA Grandmaster Award for Lifetime Achievement. His recent books include Harvest of Stars, The Stars are also On Fire, Operation Chaos, Operation Luna, Genesis, Mother of Kings, and Going for Infinity, a collection and retrospective of his life's work. Poul Anderson lived in Orinda, California where he passed away in 2001.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books (January 4, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765300737
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765300737
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.61 x 8.36 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,029,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #78,294 in Epic Fantasy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 54 ratings

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Poul Anderson

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"Poul Anderson (1926-2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his ""hard"" science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and ""fantasy with rivets,"" he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or ""Wanderer,"" Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle."

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4.1 out of 5

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Tree-man

A good conan pastiche, but Conan kinda simped his way through this.

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2023

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Conan made an appearance in his own novel somewhere around page 60 -- I forget, this wasn't the most memorable Conan novel. I suppose the purpose of this novel was to fully unveil Belit, who you hear reference to in other novels and stories but it all happened off-stage like a Greek tragedy. I also suppose Conan is young and has a bad case of puppy love, 'cause he sort of simped his way through this novel and was certainly second-fiddle to Belit.

That aside, this is a solid Conan pastiche with all the right places, evil sorcerers, tribal people struggling against evil civilization... It's worth getting and reading if you're a fan of the Conan universe.

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2014

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Conan the Rebel was written back in 1980 by Poul Anderson, a writer I’ve read and admired for years. I’ve always enjoyed Anderson’s Dominic Flandry series (haven’t read all of them and it’s been years since I picked them up), but my favorite book he wrote was Three Hearts and Three Lions, a mix of Edgar Rice Burroughs and fantasy.

I vaguely remember reading this Conan novel before, back when it first came out, and I remember struggling through it, though I can’t remember if I’d ever finished it before.

Back then I was working at Solo Cup at a factory job and had just finished college and was trying to figure out what to do with myself. I was young and restless, and since I’m ADHD my attention span isn’t always what it should be.

So either I finished the book or I didn’t.

After reading the Red Sonja graphic novel by Gail Simone, I wanted to read about Conan. I pulled this book up on Amazon, saw that it was now an ebook, and downloaded it. Then I dug in.

I have to admit, those first two chapters are tough reading. Anderson is wonderfully descriptive and evokes the mood of the novel, but there just isn’t much happening except a prophecy that we know Conan will deliver on. The novel gets faster paced after that, but it takes a while.

One of the other reasons that I wanted to read this book is because it has Belit in it. I remember Belit more from Roy Thomas’s run on the Marvel Comics. Belit only shows up in one f Robert E. Howard’s original stories, a novelette titled “Queen of the Black Coast.” I liked Belit in the comics and I was curious as to what Anderson did with her. To my chagrin, Belit isn’t in this book much, but we do get her full origin story. Now I’ve gotta go back and read Thomas’s stuff to see if the backgrounds agree.

Anderson’s book gets really involved in all the warring countries and political gamesmanship going on with the wizards. He does a nice job of lying out the Hyborean world and talking about it with authority, but the pace is erratic and the threat level sometimes requires only scant derring-do.

There’s a lot of running around, of getting from one place to another, and no shortage of coincidence (running into a band of warriors from Belit’s home village out in the jungle?). I hung with the book because there’s a lot of good stuff in here, but I got completely worn out by the princess’s infatuation with Conan and constantly throwing herself at him. I wanted more swordplay and less lust, and seeing Conan tempted at times while at the same time trying to get the princess foisted off on the young warrior with them got old in hurry.

Another thing that was interesting was Anderson’s archaic choice of language. Granted, the author had done a lot of research for his various projects over the years, but it really shows here. I know the younger me probably just glossed over the unfamiliar words, figuring out – more or less – what they were from the words around them. However, with the Kindle’s instant fingertip dictionary, I looked up a lot of those words during this read-through and learned a lot. The words are still archaic and won’t come up in a conversation anytime soon, but it was fun seeing them in play in the novel. It makes me wonder if Anderson just knew the words or kept a thesaurus at hand.

I enjoyed the book for the most part, but the ending left me feeling a little cheated. There is a dark moment where Conan almost loses the battle, but he of course gets out of it (thanks again to the coincidence of meeting up with the tribesmen loyal to Belit). The final battle against the evil wizard isn’t seen, which chapped me to no small degree.

I’m enjoying Conan all over again and look forward to reacquainting myself with more of the series, and I think I’ll read Three Hearts and Three Lions again as well.

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Monte Gilliam

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2017

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Very nice Conan saga by veteran writer Anderson, who can always be relied upon...

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Clarence W. Britton, Jr

Satisfactory

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2021

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Delivered as described

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Curriculum Vitae

Aggressively Mediocre

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2019

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This is not a terrible Conan pastiche, but it isn't a good one either. The writing style drags on in a wordy and boring fashion a great deal.

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2018

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I still love the stories thank you for taking them electronic

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mark hale

Whatttt? Not the Conan I have imagined. Although I enjoy a good saga, I felt the author had no idea who the REH hero was about and tortured plenty of Conan fans that anxiously read thru this debacle.

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2021

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A tried and failed attempt but thanks for trying. I hate giving bad reviews but this one was horrible. Please don’t do this again.

2 people found this helpful

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Manly Reading

Conan as by Poul Anderson, with literary allusions

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2015

Maybe its just because Cargoes is one of my favourite poems, but when a reference to "ivory, apes, and peacocks" was made by Belit, I pricked up my ears and smiled. If you don’t know the poem, here's the opening verse:

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Hmmm, that reminds me I need to go read Masefield's* accounts of Gallipoli and Dunkirk that I have on my shelf.
Anyway, with that aside dealt with, how is Conan the Rebel? Remember that it’s the story of Conan and Belit, the "Queen of the Black Coast", and this is a tale expanding on the paragraph

"The Tigress ranged the sea, and the black villages shuddered. Tomtoms beat in the night, with a tale that the she-devil of the sea had found a mate, an iron man whose wrath was as that of a wounded lion. And survivors of butchered Stygian ships named Belit with curses, and a white warrior with fierce blue eyes; so the Stygian princes remembered this man long and long, and their memory was a bitter tree which bore crimson fruit in the years to come."

Which in turn gave the title to a Howard collection with a disappointing introduction from a few years back.

So, lets face it, written by a giant of genre fiction, dealing with the biggest name in swords & sorcery: there is a pretty high bar to clear here, based on the expectations alone. And it does…well enough. Certainly Anderson is not trying to channel Howard, but is doing his own thing. He even drops Belit pretty quickly (her biggest role is to throw out a huge chunk of exposition - well done, but still exposition) to replace her with her brother, now a broken man in Stygia, and a new love interest for Conan (who Conan refuses, by the way, in a fashion that does not seem too forced).

In short, this is the adventures of Conan finding Belit's lost brother, losing him, seeking out a magic axe, and dallying with an evil high priestess who has quite a sideline in men. Its also "Conan the Libertarian" to a degree - while Anderson does use Howard's theme of barbarism v civilisation, it is somewhat recast into a freedom v tyranny model which isn’t quite as primal or powerful.

So: good Conan, even pretty good Conan, but not as great as you'd hope. The downside is also that this is the only Conan novel Poul Anderson wrote: while it would have been interesting to see an 80's in which he was a primary author of Conan tales, this is not what happened at all.

* If you don’t know who John Masefield was, he's the guy who wrote the "star to steer her by" line which popped up in Star Trek from time to time.

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Stephan S.

Eine ganz starke Conan-Story!

Reviewed in Germany on August 10, 2020

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Ganz interessant für mich war, dass man endlich etwas mehr über den Lebensabschnitt Conans erfährt, als er mit Bêlit zusammen war. Der Original-Autor R. Howard hat ja erstmals über Conans Piratendasein mit Bêlit geschrieben, aber genauer nur dessen Anfang und Ende. Was so dazwischen geschah (Conan war ja doch monate- oder gar jahrelang Pirat mit Bêlit), darüber wird wenig erwähnt. Hier mal eine Episode, wo man auch mehr darüber erfährt, wie Bêlit aufgewachsen ist. Interessant auch das Sprachenproblem (Conan beherrscht zunächst kein Stygisch; dieses Problem wird ziemlich bald relativ einfach gelöst): Conan bereist ja sonst fast jedes Land von Hyborien und lernt wie selbstverständlich sehr schnell die Sprachen, was nicht immer plausibel ist.

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