- Designated Hero: Conan is pretty unsympathetic in this story; he leads the slaughter of a village and agrees to free a slave girl in exchange for her virginity (although he later changes his mind and decides that he's above having sex with a woman who is unwilling).
- Narm: European Spanish readers might have a hard time taking the name "Bakalah" seriously, given that it happens to sound exactly like "bakala", a Lower-Class Lout urban tribe that was popular in Spain during the Turn of the Millennium.
- So Okay, It's Average: It's definitely one of Howard's worst Conan stories, between the rampant racism and overall lackluster presentation. But Howard never did anything halfway, and the story still contains the hallmarks that made Conan memorable in the first place. A few revisions might have improved it, but it's not unreadable by any measure.
- Values Dissonance: The portrayal of (pseudo-)African people is particularly bad in this one, even by the standards of some of Robert E. Howard's other work. Howard himself may have realized this, as he made no new or edited drafts of the story, something he did with all of the stories he was considering for publishing. By modern standards, it's by far the most racist story in Howard's Conan canon.
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