‘Conan: Blood of the Serpent’ – S.M. Stirling (Titan Books)

 

Page Count: 453 Pages.

It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote a book post so I’m a little rusty right now, bear with me and I’ll try and get back up to speed ;o)

I really need to stop buying hardbacks unless I’m absolutely certain that I’m going to read them. I’ve had a hardback copy of ‘Blood of the Serpent’ sat on a shelf for far too long so I thought I’d see what happened if I had a paperback copy in front of me (more money than sense, I know…) What happened? ‘Blood of the Serpent’ wasn’t a ‘one sitting read’ but I polished it off in fairly short order. For all the fun that I had though, I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. Let me try and explain a little better…

As 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.” Serving in the company known as Zarallo’s Free Companions, he fights alongside soldiers of fortune from Zingara, Koth, Shem, and other lands―a hard-handed band of killers loyal to anyone who pays them well.

In a Sukhmet tavern he encounters one soldier in particular―Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, a veteran of freebooters with whom Conan also sailed, launching raids out of the Barachan Isles on the Western Sea. Valeria’s reputation is that of a deadly swordswoman, a notoriety she quickly proves to be accurate. When she runs afoul of an exiled Stygian noble, however, things take a deadly turn, embroiling them both in the schemes of a priest of the serpent god Set.

Before we kick things off. I’ll say (again) that I’m no scholar of Robert E. Howard or Conan, just a reader who knows what he likes (and doesn’t) when he picks up a ‘Conan’ book. So...

I’ve always said that you can’t go too far wrong with a ‘Conan’ book, even if it’s not written by the man himself (ok, ‘Conan andthe Spider God’ is the exception that proves the rule…) Conan carries a plot like it’s not even there and watching various writers come up with stuff to pit him against is always fun, even if Conan always finds a way through (and that’s kind of the point really so that’s ok). ‘Blood of the Serpent’ is all of that and I really got into it. It may be a quieter adventure, than most, but there’s a lot to get into. You won’t find a ‘big bad’, or even a ‘medium sized’ bad, but you will find not only Conan facing down hard men, some of whom will find out that they’re not quite hard enough, but also struggling to get to grips with a truly vicious curse that can strike at any moment. I don’t want to give too much away here as I really enjoyed seeing how much of a challenge that posed Conan, especially as the supernatural tends to get to him anyway. The slightly understated tone also lets the reader focus a little more on the background scenery and I enjoyed that. I don’t know an awful lot about Conan’s world and this was a fun way to find out more.

‘Blood of the Serpent’ is a good, solid adventure then; the kind of adventure that you might find Conan having when he’s not raiding the Tower of the Elephant or something like that. Minstrels may not sing of it, in years to come, but it keeps our hero well fed and quenches his wanderlust, at least for a while. I think there’s definitely room for more tales like this. The only small issue I had was that by parking the plot just before ‘Red Nails’ begins, ‘Blood of the Serpent’ comes across a little too much like it’s there to fill a gap and be a ‘set up’ for ‘Red Nails’… Which it sort of is but it’s a lot more at the same time and I think that’s what it should be seen as, not ‘just a prequel’.

That feeling bugged me but at the end of the day, ‘The Blood of the Serpent’ is a solid ‘Conan’ tale that bodes well for future ‘Conan’ tales from Titan. Worth a read, I need to go and re-read ‘Red Nails’ now, don’t I…?