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.

I didn't really think Conan could be boring, but I found myself drifting all the time I was reading this. Some of this was quite interesting but the amount of exposition was excessive and bogged down the story. It really made me appreciate the new material more seeing the context that inspired it and having the story conclude with Red Nails. Readers familiar with Howard will fully understand the use of heightened language used to evoke a bygone age, even if some of the character descriptions might fall foul of contemporary sensibilities. as he fights against and alongside men and women from other regions was a welcome expansion to the world and lore that we know and love.

The novel’s dual themes—myth and technology—should appeal to both fantasy and hard SF readers as well as to techno-thriller fans.

He is and was the master of this genre, Red Nails in 100 pages feels like a completer tale than the 316 pages of Sword and the Serpent.At this point the novel appears to be going in a new direction and will be about how to finagle a gold heist with Stygians everywhere. The initial signs are positive, with Stirling using characters created by Howard in 'Red Nails' to create a prequel, utilising familar words, terms, and character concepts to establish and settle the reader back in to Conan's familiar territory. Not only is Conan – Blood of the Serpent a prequel to Howard’s Red Nails as advertised, I was surprised to discover that the final pages of the novel lead directly into the novella in question, with zero gap in the narrative. Employed as a scout in Zarallo’s Free Companions, a multi-ethnic mercenary band hired by the Stygians to guard against Darfari raiders, Conan seems to spend as much time riding herd on drunk and idle sell-swords as dealing with foreign threats.