Imaro

I've recently got my hands (via Interlibrary Loan) on the reprinted Imaro "novel"; really a collection of short-stories laced together as a pseudo-narrative. This was initially published some twenty-five odd years ago and failed for a variety of reasons (some of them coincidental, some of them due to the poor marketing strategy of the publisher, DAW books—for some reason nobody wants to say that the quality of the books themselves might be a factor.) They've recently been republished in trade paperback form by a small-press company, Night Shade books. http://www.nightshadebooks.com/

Anyway, I'm somewhat amused by the writer, publisher, and friend who wrote the introduction (none other than Charles De Lint) making the claims that Imaro was something really unique and extraordinary, that it specifically was not Tarzan and Conan, but black, because... honestly, that's exactly what it is.

Charles Saunders (the author) does for Africa what Robert E. Howard did for Europe and the Near East with the Hyborian Age, and for pretty much the same reason; so he can get the benefit of alluding (wink, wink) to real life cultures without feeling constrained to get every little detail right, as well as allowing him to freely mix and match cultures that in reality did not coexist at the same time. Sadly, Saunders, convinced he was doing something really unique in doing it for Africa, goes too far; he rather "cleverly" explains that cows are called ngombe, lions are called nganeh, etc. and then proceeds to use the Swahili words throughout. The only thing he's doing that's different from Howard, is that he's showing off the setting he's so proud of, the source material behind it that he's so proud of, and his knowledge of that source material, which he's also so proud of. Imaro reads like a rather self-congratulatory work of fiction. Although I'm sure some fans enjoy being exposed to African tradition (and are unwilling to go directly to the source material themselves for whatever reason) and that interests them, but it really bogs down the narrative and hurts the storytelling badly, in my opinion. Fiction—especially pulp, Sword & Sorcery, which needs to be fast-moving and exciting—is a poor vehicle for the rather ham-fisted polemic and social agenda that Imaro represents.

As well, if one can be allowed to make a genuine complaint about Howard's Conan, it's that he's often portrayed as a rather unflattering Mary Sue; he's too competent, overly idealized, lacks any noticable flaws, and rather obviously stands in for Howard's own wish-fulfilment fantasies of himself. Imaro takes these same flaws and amplifies them; Saunders makes no secret that if somehow Tarzan and Conan (to whom Imaro is often compared) were to appear suddenly in the same story with Imaro, Imaro would outclass them both.

That said, if you can get past these rather tedious flaws, the setting is imaginitive, and worth a read for that alone. But honestly, reading it, it felt constantly like I was being preached to, and that the author was showing off his research into African folklore rather than simply concentrating on telling good, interesting stories. I suspect that the claim that the one-month printing delay on the original printing of the novel (to avert a lawsuit from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs over a poorly chosen tagline on the original cover) being the main factor in Imaro's less than impressive sales is as much wishful thinking as is Imaro's own super-competence.