Book 5 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! As usual, my link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account.

My blogging is at the happy point where I occasionally get copies of books to review, and I am always delighted to get works related to Robert E. Howard’s writing, which my whole blog was originally inspired by! Last year, I reviewed Conan the Barbarian: Twisting Loyalties, written by Jim Zub, and not long ago Titan Comics sent me the next volume in the series, Conan the Barbarian: A Nest of Serpents, also written by Jim Zub! This volume covers issues #21-24 of Conan, following directly after the last volume and continuing some of the plot lines.

One thing that is fun about Zub’s writing is that he fits the stories quite nicely into the original Conan fiction by Robert E. Howard. Twisting Loyalties was set during and after Howard’s famous 1934 story Queen of the Black Coast, and A Nest of Serpents is set following the events of Howard’s The Vale of Lost Women, which was only published in 1967 years after Howard’s death.

In The Vale of Lost Women, Conan rescues a woman named Livia from being sacrificed to a foul demon in the deepest jungles and vows to get her home to her native land of Ophir. A Nest of Serpents follows up on this promise, with Conan, Livia, and some of his faithful warriors heading on the journey. Along the way, however, they find themselves diverted to Stygia, a corrupt land of serpent worshippers and powerful wizards, and must keep their wits about them to survive and escape with their lives and souls intact.

Stygia is probably the most memorable land of Conan’s world, only comparable to Conan’s icy homeland of Cimmeria. It is very clearly inspired by ancient Egypt, and the original Conan stories set there (notably The Hour of the Dragon) even include pyramids, and the names of Stygian wizards are very much Egyptian, such as Conan’s arch nemesis Thoth-Amon.

It is not too much of a spoiler to note that Thoth-Amon makes his first appearance in this modern Conan run of stories here, and he is perfectly depicted as a powerful, scheming and decadent figure. This is Conan’s first run-in with the wizard, but it is clear it is not the last: the two volumes I’ve read seem to be setting up a much more direct conflict between Conan and the servants of the serpent god Set (also an Egyptian reference). We are also introduced to the Stygian sorceress Athyr-Bast in this volume, and she serves as the most direct antagonist and one who will also clearly be a recurring problem for the Cimmerian. There is another character who makes an unexpected return in this volume, though I will not say more about that here!

Overall, this is another fun and fast-paced series of Conan’s adventures! The art by Fernando Dagnino is gorgeous and expressive and the coloring by Diego Rodriguez is vibrant yet sufficiently gritty for a Conan tale. I’m again interested to see where the story goes, now that it is clear that more conflicts between Conan and the servants of the serpent are coming in the future.

This compilation also includes a lot of nice extras, including a map of the world of Conan, a gallery of covers and alternate covers, and some pages showing preliminary sketches and plot outlines to show the process of writing. I am also highly appreciative of the thoughtful short essays by Jeffrey Shanks filling in both the fictional and real histories of characters and settings in the book, helping those who are not intimately familiar with the lore of Conan to learn some of the details.

So if you’re looking for some good Conan adventures in the style of Robert E. Howard, I can recommend A Nest of Serpents! It was really a joy to see Stygia come alive on the page.