Conan - Blood of the Serpent

Product Information

I’m going to avoid describing the novel in too much detail from this point onward so as to avoid giving away too much plot and avoid spoilers. The novel is a fast read. I read it in two sessions and never got bored. Stirling is good with detail. You feel Conan’s sweat and the real life concern of being an outsider in a place like Stygia, where even though, you may have been invited, you are really not wanted. My ongoing criticism is sword & sorcery does not lend itself to 100,000 word novels. The form works well at the novelette and novella level. Those of us who believed in Conan at the right moment in our lives never stop believing. We might not grow up to become him, but we never grow out of him, either.”—Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians Honestly, I think Stirling read a bunch of Conan stuff just so he could make fact lists. I think he completely ignored the snappy tautness of Robert E. Howard's writing...one of the main strengths of any Conan story. Oh, well, that and the sorcery that Stirling hints at, but doesn't really dive into with both feet like Howard did. So what makes it good, or at least saves it from being terrible? Stirling pays homage to the source material that nerds, such as myself, really dig. It reads like a Star Trek or Star Wars IP novel that machine guns off nod after nod, Easter Egg after Easter Egg. I won’t say he nailed Conan, but Stirling’s Conan was Conan ‘Nough. There are some admirable action scenes and I enjoyed Stirling’s Mythos nods. I received the sense Stirling is excited to write Conan and play in the REH sandbox. This one wasn’t a home run, but it has potential.

However, as far as this fan's concerned it didn't make much difference to me. I loved what was on offer here as I found myself immensely impressed by Stirling's knowledge and command of the lore, history, geography, peoples, cultures and characters, that when things are mentioned it feels consistent with the source material. The world and people are similar enough to me that the difference of writing style and even genre to an extent do not bother me whatsoever. I absolutely love this book for all that it is. As other reviewers stated it does drag sometimes as again we are used to Conan driving the action forward and getting to the heart of a problem and resolving it (although he needed a lot of external help during Hour of the Dragon, not gonna lie). Here, in his earlier years he is not a king, and follows other masters. He is known to have been a thief, a mercenary, a soldier, a pirate, whatever warms the bed and fills the belly. This will be a little frustrating to some who prefer Conan and his villains to mostly drive the plot as he is bound to the quest of his soldiery or mercenary band. Perspective Flip: The final scene of the novel shows the first scene of Red Nails, but from Conan's perspective, rather than Valeria's. Gargle Blaster: The local sorghum liquor, which Conan describes as having the same effect on one's head as a Vanir war axe. By the way, Conan and the Gods of the Mountain by Roland Green is a sequel to Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails” and Stirling’s book is a prequel. Remember those excerpts from A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career that prefaced the stories in the Lancer/Ace series? Blood of the Serpent is essentially based on the preface to “Red Nails.” S.M. Stirling (Stephen Michael Stirling, b. 1953) is a Canadian-American science-fiction and fantasy author. His literary work includes the Draka, Fifth Millennium, Shadowspawn, and Emberverse series titles. He also co-authored The General series with David Drake and teamed with Jerry Pournelle for two Falkenberg's Legion books. My first experience with Stirling is his recent Conan novel, Blood of the Serpent, published by Titan Books in 2022. It is the first official Conan novel since 2011's novelization of Conan the Barbarian.

LABELS

This volume delivers an engaging and approachable new adventure along with one of the very best of the classic stories.”—GrimDark Magazine

The adventure itself is a cool series of events and set pieces. It mostly uses the brutality of the natural world as threats rather than the supernatural. Which in a way works when you consider the pseudo-historical nature of the Conan stories. Overall, it’s a travelogue but one with a bunch of cool stops.l along the way. Prequel: This story is an immediate prequel to Red Nails, with Conan and Valeria serving in Zarallo's mercenaries in Sukhmet and the showing the circumstances that led them to where they were in that story. The final scene of this novel is actually the first scene of the novella. The book also contains a new map (presumably by De La Torre). This new map contains more detail than the Lancer/Ace (the gold standard) maps did. I wish they had printed it in a larger size. I do have a minor complaint about fonts used in the text. The book uses both italics and bold italics. At first I thought this was a clever way of replacing quotes for the character’s thoughts. But the motif is used inconsistently. I loved this book. It is almost everything I was hoping for and expecting. Stirling, I haven't read any of your other works (YET) but I am a huge fan of what you did here. I can see a few people getting disappointed by the weaker sorcery elements in a sword and sorcery tale, and honestly it felt more like a grimdark / epic low fantasy rendition than the classics. You experience the grit, the realism, the detailed explanations of foods and wines, clothing and cultures, military formations, etc.I think he has written a couple of introductions in the REH Baen series & the intro(s?) to some of the Harold Lamb Bison books.