Review: The Tower of the Elephant

My favorite Conan story

“Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.”

And that is how the Tower of the Elephant begins. A cinematic, moody introduction. One you can hear, smell, and feel. No one writes fantasy like this anymore.

In 2022, I decided I wanted to start writing. I tried to write a typical hero’s journey kind of story but kept coming up empty. I went looking for inspiration and found it with Robert E Howard’s Conan. I had not realized that Conan originated in the pulps and that his stories were almost entirely short stories. I also did not understand the difference between Sword and Sorcery and other types of fantasy.

So I went looking for audiobooks of Conan and found that there were free ones on YouTube. I stumbled across the Cybrarians channel and scrolled through numerous stories. I didn’t know where to begin, so I did a quick google search and saw that the Tower of the Elephant was one of the more popular Conan stories. I decided it was as good a place to begin as any.

It was a wise decision. I lay in bed at one in the morning and listened. I was transported. I simply did not expect the story to be so… atmospheric. It was moody and dark, the world was harsh and gritty, and Conan was not a noble hero. He was an anti-hero. Everything about it thrilled me and began a love affair with all things sword and sorcery.

I will be breaking this down with spoilers, so be warned if you have not read the Tower of the Elephant. In case you haven’t, go listen to the Cybrarian audiobook HERE before you keep reading. This is something you need to experience first.

So we begin the story in a city, in a nation called Zamora. The city is described in the paragraph above, a seedy hive of scum and villainy, so to speak. What struck me was how alive and fleshed out the place felt with only one paragraph. Howard accomplished with one paragraph what it took Tolkien a chapter to do.

We make our way into a tavern where mercenaries, slave traders, and murderers brag about their exploits. This is not a kind world. This is a world in which humanity is completely broken and no one should be trusted. Grim, for certain, but also compelling.

One such slave trader brags about his recent escapades, of how he searched for weeks for the perfect woman to steal. Again, this is not pretty, but you cannot help but keep going. As he brags, he makes mention of the Elephant Tower and the treasure within.

This is where Conan enters. In this story, he is a young man, somewhere around seventeen or eighteen. He is also a thief, someone who wants to know why no one has bothered to steal the treasure of the Elephant Tower. The slave trader openly mocks Conan for his ignorance, but this doesn’t bode well for him.

Eventually, he makes the mistake of thinking that Conan, a barbarian, is also a physical pushover. When Conan fights back with words, the slave trader draws his sword and Conan responds in kind. The lights go out, and when they come back on the slave trader is found cut open on the floor.

That’s literally the first few paragraphs and we already have a cinematic fight scene. This could well be the origin of the “Starting in a Tavern” trope, and I have never seen its equal. And this is what’s so great about Robert E Howard’s writing. In the 1930s, he was able to offer such cinematic imagery, the sort of thing we could have expected from a modern movie. He was so ahead of his time in this regard and so many more.

As we continue, Conan makes his way through the city, toward the tower. He ponders the deep things of life, considering the words of theologians and philosophers, and offers his own ideas on those subjects. As he arrives at the tower, he makes a quick assessment and climbs over the wall and into the garden where he finds a dead body. Then, a pair of hands launch out of the bushes and try to strangle him!

This is a fellow thief. He realizes that Conan is not one of the guards and introduces himself as Taurus, the prince of thieves. In this story, we don’t spend much time with Taurus, but he feels so developed and fleshed out, another of Howard’s strengths. He is able to take a character that shouldn’t feel lived in and make him feel robust and developed. Taurus and Conan seem to hold a kindred spirit, as they are both excited by danger and adventure.

As they make their plans, they are made aware of a new danger. Lions hiding in the garden. Taurus cleverly disposes of them, but not all of them, leaving Conan to face one with nothing but a sword, much to Taurus's amazement. With this task finished, they scaled the tower.

Arriving at the top, they plan to climb down through the top of the tower to steal the treasure of the elephant. Taurus tells Conan to keep watch and enters the tower, only to return seconds later choking on the foam of his own blood. He dies in Conan’s arms. Conan inspects him for clues and finds some strange holes in his neck. He draws his sword and enters.

And then… GIANT SPIDER!

This is another thing about Howard. He was able to offer the unexpected in a way that seems so fresh to modern readers. And yes, a giant spider is a trope, but I cannot find anywhere prior to Howard that offered it, so again, this seems to be the origin. Yet, as much of a trope as it is, it does not FEEL like a trope. The battle offers a real sense of danger and excitement, one that actually had me breathing faster and rubbing my palms together. The word that comes to mind is the word “thrilling”.

Of course, Conan defeats the thing. He goes deeper into the tower and finds something. Something no one expects. Something that both does and does not belong in a fantasy story and this entire narrative takes a radical left turn and goes places you just don’t see coming. Part sci-fi, part horror, part fantasy, you discover the secret of the elephant tower.

And I am not going to tell you what it is, in case you have not read it. I get it, I have gone into detail on everything in the story up to this point, but I did that for a reason. This twist is so strange, so good, so amazingly out of nowhere that I don’t want to ruin it. Everything else is just par for the course for a sword and sorcery story, but when Conan sees what the secret of the tower is it changes the game. In fact, almost everything in this story is a trope until we get here, and the reason this is not a trope is that it cannot be replicated. It simply cannot be recycled (in my humble opinion).

So, the reason this is my favorite Conan story is because it is relentlessly action-packed, thoughtful, moody, and atmospheric, and it ends in such a compelling way. This story is really the birth of the DND campaign. It’s the origin of various tropes. It was ahead of its time by almost a hundred years, and it is the best work by one of the best pulp authors to ever live.

And I was lucky to listen to this story first.

I am so grateful to have found this story while lying in my bed in the early hours of the morning. This single-handedly renewed my interest in the fantasy genre and fueled my desire to write. I cannot say enough good things about it.

What do you think of the Tower of the Elephant?