I did not realize this until I came to it but PART FOUR is extremely short, comprising only just over seven pages and a single chapter, and serves only to link SM Stirling's text in PARTS ONE-THREE to Robert E. Howard's text, Red Nails, which is reproduced on pp. 337-453, also beginning with an internal title page followed by a blank page.
AT the end of PART FOUR, Conan has found Valeria. Near the beginning of Red Nails, Valeria is found by Conan. Stirling seamlessly merges his narrative with Howard's.
Having read Conan The Rebel and Blood Of The Serpent and now begun Red Nails, we, editorially speaking, have moved from Conan as written by Poul Anderson, then by SM Stirling, to Conan as written by his creator, Robert E. Howard. (This is probably the only process that would have got me into reading Howard.)
Conan as written by Howard does not like black women. (p. 345) Conan as written by Stirling had sex with a black woman.
This is where we have to say, "Less enlightened times, right?" I will follow with interest Howard's narrative before returning to Anderson's Rogue Sword from which Conan has been a, not unwelcome, interruption.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
VAULT OF THE AGES mentions how there were black merchants from the tribes south of the Dales in Dalestown, with no caring about their skin pigmentation.
Ad astra! Sean
No, Conan mentions that he has gotten -tired- of black women, specifically black streetwalkers, in RED NAILS. It's part of his general fed-upness with working for the Stygians.
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