Reading: Kothar the Barbarian

Robert E Howard’s Conan may be the most famous literary barbarian, but he’s not the only one - in the 1960s, prolific author Gardner F Fox published five books featuring Kothar, the Barbarian, which I’ve recently finished reading:

- Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman

   ● The Sword of the Sorcerer

   ● The Treasure of the Labyrinth

   ● The Woman in the Witch-Wood

- Kothar of the Magic Sword

  ● The Helix From Beyond

  ● A Plague of Demons

- Kothar and the Demon Queen

- Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse

- Kothar and the Wizard Slayer

The very first story, The Sword of the Sorcerer, introduced not only the titular barbarian and his world, but also three elements that would accompany him until the end: his magical sword Frostfire, a gift from the powerful dead sorcerer Afgorkon; his horse Greyling, given to him by Queen Elfa of Commoral; and the vengeful witch Red Lori, who was made a prisoner thanks to Kothar but is still able to influence his destiny.

“Once, uncounted millennia before, an empire of Man was spread throughout the universe. This empire died more than a billion years ago, after which man himself sank into a state of barbarism.”

Prologue, Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman

Unlike Conan’s stories, which are pure fantasy, Kothar’s has some sci-fi. The world of Yarth is said to have been visited by men from the stars, summoned demons travel across “great gulfs of intergalactic space” (Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse), and a god turns out to be an advanced scientific device. I didn’t find Fox’s world as appealing as Howard’s Hyperborea. I don’t know why, but it felt smaller, somehow, and never lived up to the grandiose Prologue of Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman, which emphasized the space settlers and revealed that the universe was dying - “In time, there will be no Time”. Kothar himself had a pretty generic personality, too, and Fox’s inability to come up with cool fantasy names didn’t help (Ursla, Mongrolia, Minokar, abominathol? Seriously?). The scenes involving magic and demon summoning were always great, though, and the main demons were appropriately powerful and threatening:

“Something caught at Kothar, sought to drag him from the chamber and toward that lethal land of Belthamquar, to imprison him in its deepest hell for this sacrilege he was working upon the priestess of the demon-god.”

From The Sword of the Sorcerer

“Far below his feet there was only nothingness through which the red mists swirled. No floor. He stood on the doorsill and peered out into realms of galactic space so infinite that his brain reeled before its magnitude.”

From The Woman in the Witch-Wood

“Dread and dangerous are the spells of Baithorion! Be warned, mage. Better to let Abathon go back to his pleasures in awesome Kryth than to dare what has been forbidden for all men to know since Baithorion died in screaming madness.”

From Kothar and the Demon Queen

“An evil delight Belthamquar took in the screams and agonies of this man who had commanded his services. By inches he pulled loose the skin, tugging it off over head and shoulders and revealing the bloody ruin of the skinless body beneath.”

From Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse

“Then Thelonia put her hands on his chest and slid them inside his body. Up to her elbow went her hands and now Elviriom screamed even more than Thalkalides had screamed, for the hands of Thelonia were remaking and remolding his body inside his skin, breaking bones and pulling ligaments, working cartilage and gristle as a sculptor works wet clay.”

From Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse

“The pentagram was the only floor beneath his war boots. It swept at terrifying speed above those black gulfs of emptiness, racing always onward toward - A glowing, up ahead! A whiteness that seemed to crawl as might a maggot across the dark deeps of space!”

From Kothar and the Wizard Slayer

It’s a shame Fox didn’t show more of the Belthamquar and Thelonia demonic power couple. The shorter stories of the first two books worked much better than the three longer ones, and I wished Fox had stuck to that format. Frankly, I think A Plague of Demons would’ve been a much better ending to the whole series than Kothar and the Wizard Slayer. The meandering Kothar and the Demon Queen was a chore to read and made me tired of sword fights. Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse was better at connecting most of the various plots to the main storyline, even if it resulted in way too many coincidences. It also offered a glimpse into Kothar’s childhood and hinted at a secret ancestry and destiny for the barbarian. Kothar and the Wizard Slayer did away with unnecessary detours but felt a bit rushed, left things unexplained, including those hints from the previous book, and ruined everything with the kind of terrible ending that sullies what came before. I hated it so much that I wrote this post. Warning: SPOILERS

Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse seemed to be trying to move away from Red Lori. For the first time there was no mention of the vengeful witch and the childhood flashback with Ursla, priestess of the wild, linked Kothar to the friendlier Lupalina, the wolf mistress. Ursla’s references to Kothar’s non barbarian ancestry in a story featuring a hidden heiress also seemed to be directing his future into another, perhaps more ambitious direction. This change felt a little forced and I’m no fan of the sudden appearance of important, heretofore unmentioned characters. Well, there was no need to worry - Kothar and the Wizard Slayer threw all that away, including Ursla’s reveals, which was pretty annoying. Why write them in the first place? Anyway, the original helping mage Afgorkon came back in the form of a stone idol inhabited by his spirit. He started by merely giving advice, moved on to summoning demons, and later squeezed the killer wizard to death with his stone hands. After all the hype about his powers, it was nice to finally see him in action, but the MVP of the story was Red Lori, who returned on a non-evil mission: to stop whoever is killing the sorcerers of Yarth. For that, she needs Kothar and Afgorkon’s secret spell stash that’s still in his sunken tower. Kothar and the people who’ve been shaping his path all together on a mission to stop a mysterious killer who uses zombies to do his dirty work? Very promising.

“Cursed be the name of Kothar! May his bones rot in his flesh and may his flesh stink with the suppurations of ulcerated wounds! May Omorphon sink his serpentine fangs in his liver and never let him go.”

The flame-haired witch drove much of the action - Kothar even felt sidelined at times. Since, as I wrote earlier, he’s kinda generic, it wasn’t really a problem. I rolled my eyes at her decision to seduce the barbarian, seeing it as just an excuse for them to have sex as Fox had made her hatred too deep for it to happen any other way. It was a relief when she dropped the act and showed that she was still the same old Red Lori. I know I should’ve been rooting for Kothar to kick her ass, and normally I would - after all, she was planning to sacrifice an innocent girl as payment for Afgorkon’s help - but Fox chose this last book to introduce a little barbarian realism by having Red Lori outright state that Kothar had “raped his share of women”, something he didn’t deny. WTF? Why even write that? Can we go back to the secret ancestry, please? To make matters worse, Kothar did come across as uncharacteristically rapey throughout the book. And this after Stefanya was spared when she was imprisoned by Torkal Moh in Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse. It was ridiculous to think that a man who left someone to be eaten alive by rats would elect to send his unwilling captive to the dungeons to be tortured into submission instead of simply raping her. However, I accepted it because I prefer my Sword and Sorcery sans sexual violence. Yes, everyone knows that in the real world, men like Kothar and Conan would be rapists, but these fictional barbarians tend to do the opposite and save women from being raped. Conan does this several times and at one point even refuses to get the promised “payment” from a woman he helped. Yes, occasionally there are some iffy situations, but it’s usually the kind of thing you can ignore as being seriously dated. Fox’s choice meant that neither Kothar nor Red Lori had the moral high ground, which made it difficult to root for the “hero”. Sure, Kothar is the lead, but so what? That Red Lori was a more interesting and complex character - vengeful, scheming, knowledgeable, resourceful - and was doing bad things to stop a serial killer didn’t help. Of course, Fox made sure to extensively describe her physical attributes several times, but she still felt like a character rather than just an object for Kothar to lust over. This made the ending even worse.

So, the ending… Ugh! I thought the way Ian C Esslemont used Lady Envy to prop up Fisher kel Tath in Orb Septre Throne was bad (and made worse by the fact that Fisher is a shit character), but what Fox did to Red Lori went well beyond that. Was she based on a real woman who turned him down? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of. (You know, like how Hans Christian Andersen based the titular Snow Queen on an opera singer who didn’t reciprocate his feelings) And what did Fox do to Red Lori? Well, he had Kothar help the planned sacrifice escape, which left her at the mercy of Afgorkon. I had thought that something like this might happen and the dead sorcerer would take her to wherever he was. That would’ve been an okay ending for the character. Then, when Kothar offered to return Frostfire in exchange for her life, I thought Afgorkon would take her powers, which would’ve made them more equal and could’ve led to something in the future (I never wanted them together, but it was clear that Fox had other plans). This would’ve been a new beginning for both of them and a nice parallel to the ending of the very first story, where Kothar chose Frostfire over Queen Elfa’s gifts. However, Afgorkon refused to take the sword back and instead took Red Lori’s powers and memories. Kothar’s reaction?

“She was indeed, little more than a lovely shepherdess or milkmaid now. The barbarian grinned. This was the way he had always wanted her.”

How the hell could Fox think that was a good idea? Even better? Kothar told Red Lori she was his slave when she woke up. Afterwards, when they were attacked by some former minions of the defeated wizard killer, there was this:

“Red Lori was also tied at wrists and ankles, and she stared at him dumbly, like a patient beast waiting for its master to save her.”

So, first Red Lori got demoted to shepherdess, then to slave girl, and finally to defenceless animal. And how does this “patient beast” react when “its master” gets close to her?

“He walked toward the girl who smiled at him, weakly but with promise. Her green eyes met his and fell before his stare.”

This deserves several Barf emojis. The fact that Red Lori was so powerful and independent before made this ending even worse. And this was what weirded me out the most - that Fox didn’t write Red Lori as the passive, helpless female character in awe of the hero that you’d expect from this type of story from the start. And why not? Did he enjoy tearing her down to give his hero what he wanted? There was more than one unhappy ending for Red Lori that he could’ve chosen and which wouldn’t have involved turning her into a human blowup doll (because let’s face it, that’s what she became) and Kothar could’ve gone back to Stefanya and Lupalina/Samandra. Of course, keeping Frostfire means that he’d never be able to amass wealth, and… Oh, wait, Fox ditched that too, along with Red Lori’s bodily autonomy:

“I am weary of sorcery and wizards, I would take employment with the thieves, perhaps even get to command a band of my own. It is in my mind that a smart man might unite those warring baronies and make a kingdom for himself.”

WTF? Did Fox forget the Frostfire spell that he kept reminding readers of in every single story? And if Kothar wanted a kingdom, why didn’t he stay with Stefanya in Phalkar instead of sneaking out of the palace at the end of the previous book? This makes no sense!

You know, I’ve been blaming Fox, but maybe it wasn’t his choice. It really looked like he wanted to go in a different direction with Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse, and this felt like pure fan-service bordering on fanfiction written by an angry incel who had been living through Kothar and was dying to punish Red Lori for her uppity ways. So, maybe Fox wrote this crap due to popular demand/request from his publisher/the public? And was Kothar’s sudden urge to get his own kingdom due to that other famous barbarian having ended up as a king, too? Was that why Fox decided (or was pushed) to pretend Frosfire’s spell didn’t exist? There was even a mention of Hyperborea when Red Lori summoned Thissikis in Chapter One. Whatever Fox’s reasons were, this was a terrible ending for the series and the characters. Kothar, too, got screwed over. In The Sword of the Sorcerer, Kothar thought about grabbing Red Lori and taking her away but then when he did capture her, he didn’t hurt her and handed her over to his employer, Queen Elfa. His thoughts after he defeated the witch? “There was a sense of accomplishment in the big barbarian, but it was mingled with sympathy and something of sorrow for the girl who lay unconscious on his shoulder”. I can’t imagine the Kothar of Kothar and the Wizard Slayer behaving like this towards a helpless Red Lori. In a single book, he devolved into a rapist eager to start his own band of thieves. And this after a mission to stop a serial killer who was also helping a corrupt king exploit his subjects. Given Kothar’s personality makeover, it’s unlikely he’ll be a kinder ruler.

It’s not that difficult to see why Fox’s Kothar didn’t endure like Howard’s Conan, and it’s not just because of Kothar’s blandness. In a way, the world of Yarth is more outlandish than Hyperborea, which is closer to existing ancient legends and mythologies and therefore easier to get into. Fox should’ve devoted more pagetime to developing it, but apart from a few mentions of the space settlers and the universe’s impending doom, he didn’t do much worldbuilding. The several different kingdoms come across as too similar with none standing out. There are some great scenes - usually the ones involving magic - but the whole never becomes as good as the sum of its parts. It’s probably why the shorter tales work better - the plots and characterization are tighter, without the need for filler. And then there was that ending. Robert E Howard may have died in 1936, so more than thirty years before Fox’s Kothar stories were published, but he somehow managed to avoid doing to his female characters what Fox did to Red Lori. Are there some very dated attitudes in Conan’s stories? Yes, plenty, The Vale of Lost Women being the worst offender. However, they’re easier to brush away as being of their time. None of the women are going to outshine the hero (though, frankly, neither will any of the other male characters). Will they fall for him? Most of them, yes (Bêlit in Queen of the Black Coast being the most OTT), but they won’t throw away a kingdom to follow him (see Yasmina in The People of the Black Circle). However, Red Lori’s fate isn’t a little detail you can ignore - it’s an integral part of the hero’s ending. Kothar being acknowledged as a rapist in-story, even if we never see him actually attacking anyone, probably contributed to diminish his appeal. This isn’t just a badly thought out scene you can ignore - this is now part of the lead’s characterization.

VERDICT

Well, the first two books were good, but the following three books had several issues. Like I wrote earlier, I wasn’t a fan of Kothar and the Demon Queen, though it had information about those space settlers and the universe. Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse left some loose ends that were never picked up afterwards, but also had some great demonic action in the second half. As for Kothar and the Wizard Slayer? Wish I hadn't read it at all, or at least had stopped before Afgorkon collected his payment.

By Danforth