From here the two diverge: The Scarlet Citadel, a short story, ends with Conan coming back when the rioting has just started and making short work of his foes; in the book-length Hour of the Dragon Aquilonia has to live under a long and harrowing foreign occupation while Conan goes through a long hazardous quest, before he could finally come back and dispose of his foes.

Conan's quest to retrieve the Heart of Ahriman in order to defeat the wizard and regain his throne takes him through all the kingdoms of the Hyborian Age.

The first paperback edition was published by Ace Books D-36 in 1953[3] in a tête-bêche double with The Sword of Rhiannon and cover art by Norman Saunders.

It has also been translated into Japanese, Italian, Finnish, French, German, Swedish, Czech, Russian, Sinhalese, and Spanish, Polish.

Reviewing the Gnome Press edition, Groff Conklin found the novel to have "real merit" considered as an imaginative work, but characterized Howard's writing as "only average [and] laden with bombast".

[5] L. Sprague de Camp, acknowledging that Howard was "an almost-very-good writer ... with limiting quirks," praised the novel as "a sanguinary combination of sorcery, skulduggery, and swordplay.

... "Howard is mature as a prose stylist -- varying his delivery from headlong fast-paced action, to passages of atmospheric prose-poetry.

[9] There is an eight and half hour professional commercial reading available under the title of The Bloody Crown of Conan (originally Trantor, 2009, now available through Audible).

[10] In 2012, Dark Horse began a new comic series called Conan the Conqueror; the first stories are an adaptation of The Hour of the Dragon.