The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is the longest and one of the last of the Robert E. Howard fantasy novels featuring Conan the Cimmerian, also known as Conan the Barbarian.  In many ways it is a distillation of the motifs and themes common to the Conan canon. We begin with a middle-aged Conan reigning as King of Aquilonia and prey to a group of conspirators who seek to depose him and restore the throne to Vaerius, heir of his predecessor, Numedides. With the aid of the ancient sorcerer Xaltotun they overcome the Aquilonian army and capture Conan. While he awaits execution a sympathetic slave girl, Zenobia, risks her life to set him free. He sets out on an arduous quest to defeat the wizard and regain his throne, vowing to make Zenobia his queen. The story was serialized in five issues of pulp magazine Weird Tales from December 1936 – April 1936 before appearing book form in 1950. Critic Groff Conklin praised the book as “a sanguinary combination of sorcery, skulduggery, and swordplay.”