By Crom! Amazon's doing a Conan the Barbarian series!

So apparently this was announced at some point in the past, but then nothing was heard about it until now. According to Syfy Wire, the show is being developed by Ryan Condal, the co-creator of the SF TV show The Colony and screenwriter of the future Academy Award-winning movie Rampage (you know, the one with Dwayne Johnson and a giant mutant gorilla? Yeah, that one.) and will adapt the short stories written by Robert E. Howard.

According to Condal, the first episode of the Conan series will adapt “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” one of the primary tales in Howard’s canon for his signature character.

“I think the Conan purists will be very pleased,” said Howard, while setting the stage for Amazon's pilot episode. “If anybody knows and follows the saga [‘The Frost-Giant’s Daughter’] is... the earliest story in Conan’s life. He’s basically just left Cimmeria and he’s running around as a mercenary with this Viking band of warriors called the Aesir... I’ve put [the Conan stories] back in [chronological] order and the idea is to tell Conan’s story over the time of his life.”

I'm intrigued. The idea of following the Cimmerian's life in proper order rather than just random points I think is a good idea. Condal also says that the show will have a serial element to it, which I guess means that each episode won't be a self-contained, standalone. I wonder if that means that all the events in each episode will build up towards something big near the end of the first season?

So what do you folks think? Does the prospect of a Conan the Barbarian series pique your interest? Will Amazon screw this up or will it strike gold?

My fantasy book collection isn't great, but it doesn't exactly suck either

I've been taking pictures of my various bookshelves lately and thought I'd share the ones of my fantasy books.

 I got the cabinet itself by swapping with one of my parents.

 It's worth noting that this isn't the whole entire shebang. I could only fit so many in the cabinet, so I had to be choosy with what went in it and I chose books that I'm planning on reading if not this year, then the next. The ones that didn't make it are probably going to end up boxed up with the rest in the closet.

I think it's a nice collection, though. It shows where my tastes in the fantasy genre lay which is mostly in the more standard and maybe "generic" territories. I also favor books that aren't doorstoppers. That one Sanderson book is giving me the stink eye, but it's true otherwise.

Holy moly guacamole: Forgotten Realms edition

I got myself a nice little book haul at a thrift store yesterday. I was scanning through their book section when I stumbled upon books 6-16 of The Harpers series, what I think might be the original paperbacks of The Icewind Dale Trilogy, and a book from The Lost Gods series called Tymora's Luck. The whole lot, sixteen books in total, cost me nearly twelve dollars, but I figured it was worth it. For the most part, the books are in surprisingly good condition. The exception was The Crystal Shard. It had something stuck to the cover that I'm cleaning off.

I'll take pictures of them at some point and post them here.