{"id":20359,"date":"2025-08-20T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=20359"},"modified":"2025-07-14T16:46:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T20:46:17","slug":"shadow-of-the-smoking-mountain-by-howard-andrew-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2025\/08\/20\/shadow-of-the-smoking-mountain-by-howard-andrew-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Shadow of the Smoking Mountain’"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I am not a big sword-and-sorcery<\/a> fan, I have enjoyed Howard Andrew Jones<\/a><\/strong>‘s first two Hanuvar<\/strong> books.<\/p>\n

\"Shadow<\/a>It was planned to be a series of five volumes. I have reviewed The Lord of a Shattered Land<\/em> and The City of Marble and Blood<\/em>, and now move to the third: Shadow of the Smoking Mountain<\/em>. Sadly, as I think many people know, Jones passed away in January 2025.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if we will get any further works in the series. Did Jones create any outline, or were the next two books that were completed? I have no idea. But we can at least get the ones out there and his other works as well.<\/p>\n

To bring people up to speed, the series focuses on our hero and former general Hanuvar Cabera<\/strong>. His is a world similar to ours, though there are also magic, dangerous animals, and supernatural beings, including some Lovecraftian ones. The series overall is inspired by the Punic War between Carthage and Rome, with Hanuvar himself loosely based on Hannibal<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here, the Dervan Empire is the Rome analog, against the nation of Volanus, the Carthage analog. Dervan has finally conquered and destroyed Volanus, selling the survivors, around a thousand, into slavery. Hanuvar has established a new land for the Volani far to the west and has returned to try to find and free his people. I should point out that Dervan, at this time, only controls the equivalent of the Italian peninsula.<\/p>\n

Hanuvar is no Conan<\/a><\/strong>. While a skilled warrior and general, he is an older man. He has lost his family, though there is a chance his daughter (and a niece) is alive, and so this is another goal of his. But he must work unseen, going in disguise and making use of all his skills and cunning. This means that often the people he meets and helps must be kept in the dark about who the person helping them is.<\/p>\n

In the first book, Hanuvar was joined by a Herrenian playwright and actor, Antires Sosilos<\/strong>, who hopes to write of his tales. I suspect Herrenia is meant to be a Greek analog. He soon starts playing an important role, including helping Hanuvar in disguising himself.<\/p>\n

They were joined by additional allies toward the end of the first book, including the Dervan general who previously defeated Hanuvar, Ciprion<\/strong>, who is now a senator and advisor to the new emperor. Ciprion has further been buying Volani slaves, especially children, to save them from a worse fate.<\/p>\n

In the second book, Hanuvar makes contact with others, including members of his old spy network to help him in his task, as well as the head of a rival family to Hanuvar’s, who moved to Derva. She will prove important in setting up Hanuvar’s shipbuilding business in Tyvol, loosely analogous to Veneto. And at the end of that volume, it had launched the first vessel to the new Volani homeland.<\/p>\n

Other events of the second volume include a new Dervan emperor, who is not so opposed to the Volani, and who has curtailed the “revenants,” the Volani secret police who were searching for Hanuvar. But if everything was going well, we wouldn’t need any further volumes, right? Because there are more Volani slaves they want to free. And Hanuvar hopes to find his missing daughter, Narisia<\/strong>, who supposedly escaped the fall of Volanus, or at least get a lead. Or find his niece Edonia<\/strong>. And the revenants are still searching for Hanuvar, though not to the extent they had been.<\/p>\n

The third volume takes Hanuvar and friends to the southern part of the Dervan peninsula, to an area where there are three volcanoes, hence the title. Each chapter is more or less standalone, but fits into the overall storyline of the volume. The overarching storyline is finding his niece and a lead on his daughter. In the first chapter, Hanuvar visits the estate of Ciprion, where the Volani children are. A nearby scholar has several Volani slaves, but isn’t interested in selling them. But he is interested in investigating possible underground ruins left behind by a mysterious, distant race called “The Vanished Ones.” This scholar, Calenius<\/strong>, is inspired by Karl Edward Wagner<\/a><\/strong>‘s Kane<\/a><\/strong>. He will return a few times in the volume, in particular the final chapter, which wraps up several threads.<\/p>\n

In the other chapters, Hanuvar is working to free others, but there are always complications. In one, some of the people he took to New Volani want to return, as they are not aware of who Hanuvar is and want to harass the Dervans. But this would just make Hanuvar’s task harder, so he is able to dissuade them.<\/p>\n

In another, a legate of the revenants gets Calesius to use his sorcery to make a wounded soldier think he is Hanuvar. But things don’t go quite as anyone expects. And this creates further complications with a roving group of escaped slave gladiators. In one chapter, a group of soldiers, along with a revenant sorcerer, is hunting down Hanuvar’s relatives. Is it his niece or his daughter? Hanuvar, with the help of Calenius, will finally get confirmation that both his niece and daughter are alive, and a lead as to where they are. In another chapter, Antires gets a chance to solo, with some help from others. The final story has a final encounter with Calenius, which also involves the volcanoes.<\/p>\n

At the end of the volume, Hanuvar knows that his niece and daughter are alive. It’s all a matter of getting them, which is clear will not be easy. I suspect that this might have been the planned overarching storyline for the next volume, which was to be titled Daughters of the Silver Towers<\/em>. As I said, I have no idea what, if anything, we might see.<\/p>\n

Regardless, this is a great series and I encourage others to check it out and Jones’ other works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I am not a big sword-and-sorcery fan, I have enjoyed Howard Andrew Jones‘s first two Hanuvar books. It was planned to be a series of five volumes. I have reviewed The Lord of a Shattered Land and The City of Marble and Blood, and now move to the third: Shadow of the Smoking Mountain. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":20814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at 'Shadow of the Smoking Mountain' by Howard Andrew Jones.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[1766,1581,1182,1183,991],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-20359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-pulp","category-review","tag-baen-books","tag-howard-andrew-jones","tag-kane","tag-karl-edward-wagner","tag-sword-and-sorcery"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2025\/08\/shadow-of-the-smoking-mountain-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-5in","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20359"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20830,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20359\/revisions\/20830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20359"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=20359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}