By Loren L. Coleman

Ace, 2005

Reviewed by Ryan Harvey

The Story

Grimnir, the monstrous leader of the Vanir who have raided into Cimmeria, plans his final push from the northwest to destroy the Cimmerian clans with his might and the wizardry of his Ymirish sorcerers. Kern Wolf-Eye and his comrades—his "wolves"—have established themselves in Clan Murrogh, where they try to forge an alliance between the feuding clans. Ros-Crana of Clan Callaugh moves her forces through the west to fulfill the same task. But a festering evil works within the clans that threatens to push them into all-out war and leave them vulnerable to Grimnir's assault. Kern strives to find a leader who can unify the clans and prepare for the final conflict with Grimnir. At the same time Kern strives within himself to repress a magical power in his half-Ymirish blood that threatens to destroy everything.

Comments

When the final battle for Cimmeria rages over the Hoathi Plateau, it provides for an exciting few chapters of bloodshed, swinging axes, flying beasts, and savage magic. As the concluding sequence of the "Legends of Kern" trilogy, the clash between the clans of Cimmeria and the power of Grimnir and his Vanir doesn't disappoint.

Good luck staying awake until then.

After the promising upswing in Volume II, Cimmerian Rage, Kern's adventures return to a meandering and slow trudge through dead-end subplots, needlessly padded-out chapters, and a confusion of characters, clans, and geography. The action-heavy opening, in which the Vanir attack the village of Gorram and Kern's magic abilities start to turn him into a more interesting hero than he was previously, will give readers hope. Author Coleman even manages a poignant moment with the young warrior Ehmish that rivals most of the character work in the first two volumes. But immediately afterwards Songs of Victory shifts into "filler" mode, where it seems Coleman needed to stretch out the plot to match the available space of three hundred and twenty-five pages.

Hints in the early books about Kern's inherent sorcerous abilities at last break through to the surface, but not potently enough to make the long wait worth it. Kern has grown slowly as a hero over the space of the trilogy, but he still hasn't really grown up at the end of Songs of Victory. Supposedly a Legend (as the series' title proclaims) he feels more like a Heroic Rumor. He does fare better than the other characters, who remain as they started as in the first book. Ros-Crana, the woman leader of Clan Callaugh, has the strongest presence in the supporting cast, while Maev as Kern's potential romantic interest almost doesn't register. Perhaps most disappointing is Lodur, whom Volume II set up as a major adversary for Kern but who gets scant to do here except mark time.

The concept of the Cimmerian clans warring with each other because of the insidious secret influence of Grimnir and his doppelgängers has great potential (even if it feels similar to the King Théoden-Gríma Wormtongue relationship in The Lord of the Rings), but it should have appeared in an earlier book and gotten resolved in the beginning of Songs of Victory; here it slows down the middle of the story too much.

The abundance of clans, characters, and unclear geography also weigh down the narrative. At this point the sheer number of Cimmerian Clans has reached critical mass so that even people who read Blood of Wolves and Cimmerian Rage recently will find it hard keeping distinct who belongs to what clan, who the chieftain are, and what the individual clans' positions are regarding Kern and the fight against Grimnir. The movements of the various bands across Cimmeria really cry out for a specialized map of the region. The novel provides the same map of the Hyborian Age present in most Conan-related books, but Ace could have aided the clarity of the plot immensely with a detailed map of Coleman's version of Cimmeria.

Songs of Victory does have one good action highlight during the slow middle span: a battle with risen dead around the town of Cruaidh. Coleman's writing works strongest when it gets into horrific sequences, like this one and the spider fight in Cimmerian Rage. The gruesome doppelgängers also create shivery suspense, but they could have been used even more effectively. In general, the supernatural aspects of the "Legends of Kern" rise above the mundane wandering-about that infects the series. (And I wanted more of the yetis. Give me more yetis!)

As the final volume of a trilogy, Songs of Victory should have had an apocalyptic rush from the start, a feeling of hurtling toward the inevitable showdown. However, the book stalls almost immediately, wanders into subplots that do not conclude adequately, and then hastily gets together for the last bash. It's a nice bash, but getting there takes too much effort.

I may sound harsh in my criticisms of Songs of Victory, but I need to make something clear about the entire "Legends of Kern" trilogy and why I think it failed overall: it has nothing to do with the writing skills of Mr. Coleman, who shows himself adept at the barbarian vigor of the setting, and has everything to do with the length of the telling. At three volumes and approximately nine hundred pages combined, "Legends of Kern" lacks sufficient story to support interest and so instead relies on padding. This problem is emblematic of a serious complaint I (and many others) have about contemporary fantasy publishing. Modern fantasy novels too often fall prey to the "more is more" fallacy, and writer after writer gorges bookstore shelves with trilogies, tetralogies, decalogies, etc. Why did Ace and CPI decide to go for such a word-heavy approach to the "Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures" series when the best examples of Conan writing—Robert E. Howard's—were short stories, novellas, and a single medium-sized novel? The Hyborian Age doesn't lend itself well to a multivolume series; it encourages brevity, action, and moments of piercing yet concise introspection. Read any of Howard's Conan stories and you will see the astonishing economy that he used. He could craft stirring descriptions in a small space. When he did choose to wax poetic, he could absolutely rivet you with the beauty of his prose, but those passages always served a purpose, and it wasn't to jack up the word count. (Remember, Howard got paid by the word! His restraint had economic consequences.)

"Legends of Kern" slogs in circles through all three volumes when it could easily have contracted into one book. Although we can't fully judge the "Hyborian Adventures" series yet with two more trilogies coming up, this first experiment stands as an unfortunate failure. I encourage Ace and CPI to investigate doing longer, single-volume books in their future publishing plans with Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age.