The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Howard pastiche tradition is not an off-the-spinner-rack paperback with a Frazetta, Ken Kelly, Boris, or Royo, cover the likes of what Ballantine, Ace, and Tor published in the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s.

Conan isn’t the only one pursuing Valeria; while Conan is content to bide his time and prove his merits, an arrogant Stygian commander named Khafset proves himself less willing to take no for an answer. Both authors give the reader numerous scenes of intense combat against both man and beast (Stirling’s Conan slaughters a veritable zoo’s worth of African wildlife), but I was surprised to find it was Howard that went further in graphic detail when describing bloody swordplay.If Stirling hadn’t felt compelled to include “Red Nails” as his finale, the events in this novel, minus Valeria, could have been the main plot elements of a wholly original novel. See, there is a dialogue exchange occurring in the opening scene of Red Nails that functions as expository backstory to the thrilling tale that follows. Originally published in the pulp magazine 'Weird Tales', the character would go on to achieve remarkable popularity, with the final published tale in Howard's lifetime being 'Red Nails'. Like Howard, Stirling has plundered actual history for inspiration, but again, with less, you know, racism.

It may not be perfect, and some people are likely going to have decades of expectations to sour the experience, but it's something special. And after Valeria takes “drastic measures to repulse a Stygian officer, Conan follows her south into the lands of the blacks. Remember those excerpts from A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career that prefaced the stories in the Lancer/Ace series? The Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures paperbacks that started publishing in 2005 don’t count, as those stories didn’t feature our favorite Cimmerian front and center. I think Stirling channels Conan well enough here; it’s not Howard, but I also don’t think a pastiche author should try to copy the original authors’ style.The plotting, such as it is, is so pedestrian as to render it glacial, with extended periods of descriptive decrepitude completely alien to Howard's gift for narrative thrust and pacing. There are odd choices, like having Conan fight two separate crocodiles in two separate scenes, and drawing out for a few hundred pages the backstory of the events leading up to Red Nails; a backstory that Howard summed up perfectly succinctly in a couple of lines in the original story. De Camp and Jordan managed, to varying degrees, to continue Howard's stylistic turns in a manner respecting the original source material whilst tuning the dialogue to modern ears. My hobbies are mostly related to the craft -- I love history, anthropology and archaeology, and am interested in the sciences. All of that being said, I am still excited about Titan Books publishing more Conan and I look forward to the next volume which is by Mr.

Valeria is quickly introduced: “Keep your paws off my arse, Stygian pig,” the voice said, “or I’ll feed you your fingers and ram your severed sword hand thumb up your bunghole with the toe of my boot. I will say that there was enough fun action in Blood of the Serpent to elevate it to a passing grade for me. I read books, and I dreamed of Mars, and the planets in those books, and of the Hyborian Age of Robert E. CONAN OF CIMMERIAAs sword for hire for a mercenary troop, Conan finds himself in Sukhmet, a filthy backwater town south of the River Styx considered "the arse-end of Stygia.

Titan Books, a UK-based publisher that mostly peddles TV, film, and videogame tie-in books, mentions on Conan. The story is pretty good- it fills in the time Conan and Valeria are with a band of Free Companions mercenaries.