Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God by Tim Waggoner (Titan Books, October 28, 2025). Cover artist unknown

Titan Books is on a roll, publishing Conan novels in quick succession: S. M. Stirling’s Blood of the Serpent (2022), John C. Hocking’s City of the Dead (2024), James Lovegrove’s Cult of the Obsidian Moon (2024), Tim Lebbon’s Songs of the Slain (2025), and Tim Waggoner’s Spawn of the Serpent God (2025).  And their 2026 schedule promises more with John Langan’s The Brides of Crom.

Here we delve into Tim Waggoner’s Spawn of the Serpent God. He’s a Bram Stoker Award-winning author known for horror and media tie-in fiction. Recently, he was honored for his Terrifier #2: The Official Movie Novelization with a Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. With approval from movie writer and director Damien Leone, Waggoner had doubled the size of the hack-and-slash script by adding lore and characterization (I plan to interview Tim Waggoner about this for Black Gate‘s Beauty in Weird/Horror series). Anyway, Waggoner’s knack for tie-ins and deepening characters is demonstrated again in Conan: Spawn of the Serpentas he highlights the dangers of Zamora.

Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God is sooooo Zamorian!

This post:

• Details many tie-ins and connections to previous Conan works
• Provides excerpts of Waggoner’s take on melee, characterization, and sorcery
• Explains the byline “A Scourge of the Serpent Novel” and the connected media

Back Cover Blurb

A new chapter of the Titan comics & Heroic Signatures massive narrative event: Scourge of the Serpent. A thrilling story about Conan the Barbarian facing violent abominations written by a Bram Stoker Award Winning Author.

“What do you know of the Cult of Set?”

In Zamora, the city of thieves, Conan meets Valja, a thrill-seeking thief. She entices him to join her on a heist, where they steal a golden statuette of Ishtar, said to contain the goddess herself. After killing a dozen guards and failing to escape, the pair are saved by priestesses of Mitra. But Conan knows that nothing is free.

The priestesses have need of their skills. They have waged war against Set, god of chaos and serpents, who demands constant sacrifice from his subjects and massacred thousands of his followers. Yet they are no match for Uzzeran, a powerful sorcerer, who has been performing unspeakable experiments on humans in the name of Set. To defeat Uzzeran, they will need a legendary warrior on their side. They need Conan the Barbarian.

 Zamora on the Map!

Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God is sooooo Zamorian!

Spawn of the Serpent God reads as a sequel to Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant.” One year after that story, Part I of the novel presents Conan as a nineteen-year-old roaming the temple district in the Maul; this is part of the City of Zamora, which is the capital of the district of the same name in Robert E. Howard (REH)’s continent of Hyboria (see map). Zamora is also known as “City of Thieves.” Of course, Conan is compelled to revisit the tower ruins!

This round, Yag-Kosha is not reprised; instead, the tower is infested with Set’s minions! Who the hell is Set? Well Set is the titular serpent god. The staging is a beautiful mashup of the original Howard Conan mythos blended with the fan-revered 1982 movie adaptation, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the thiefing barbarian, and whose archenemy was Set’s cult (images below). The movie played homeage to the “Tower of the Elephant” by switching out a giant spider for a giant snake in a tower that Conan enters to steal a gem. Spawn of the Serpent God plays on nostalgia, the short story, and the movie. In place of the magical jewel of the short story (the Heart of the Elephant), we are exposed to a similar magical gem called the Eye of the Serpent. Plenty of serpent horrors abound.

Uzzeran, the evil sorcerer of Set, invites confrontation from Conan and a small team that includes Anot (a shaman, more on her below in the Excerpts), Naerys (a priestess of Mitra), and the thief Valja. Avoiding spoilers, the mission goes spectacularly sour for everyone involved, protagonists and antagonists alike. Part 2 of the Novel addresses the bizarre repercussions after a 15year span. During this time, Conan befriends a sword-wielding Khitan named Qiang. The novel culminates with an epic confrontation that rivals Tolkien’s Battle of the Five Armies conclusion to The Hobbit.

Expect Tie-ins to Zamorian Elements

• Towers, Serpents & Black Lotus from REH’s “Tower of the Elephant” and the 1982 Movie

  • As mentioned above, Conan revisits the titular “Tower of the Elephant” in Zamora. That was REH’s third published Conan story; see Jayem Wilcox’s illustration for the 1933 edition of Weird Tales below.
  • In “Tower of the Elephant,” REH had Conan paired with the Prince of Thieves Taurus, who employed Black Lotus powder to kill a bunch of lions guarding the tower. That drug is prominent again!
  • REH’s tower had no serpents, but the 1982 Conan movie featured Set and a Tower of the Serpent (as detailed above)
  • Waggoner equates Set with other godlike serpents like Lovecraft’s Yig
  • The magical jewel called the Eye of Set builds on the mechanics of REH’s Heart of the Elephant gem

• Ape-Men from REH’s “Rogues in the House”

  • Ape-Men roam Zamora, so expect them. Recall Thak? He was a half-pape/half-human being introduced in REH’s “Rogues in the House”  (Weird Tales, 134). Thak resided in the mountainous fringes of Zamora.
  • Frank Frazetta painted a red-cloaked Thak assailed by Conan in 1966, and the piece covered the 1967 Conan collection from Lancer/Ace (it’s iconic, see the painting below).
  • Thak inspired the Hall of Mirrors creature in the 1984 movie Conan the Destroyer.

• Spiders and Zath

  • Spiders roam Zamora. Big ones!
  • Robert E. Howard presented a large, nameless spider in”Tower of the Elephant.” The 1977 cover to Savage Sword of Conan #24 captures that well.
  • The Spider God Zath was introduced in L. Sprague de Camp’s 1980 novel Conan and the Spider God. Conan encounters it in the city of Yezud, Zamora.

Zamorian Influences in Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God

Excerpts from Conan: Spawn of the Serpent God

Classic Conan Melee

The Aesir woman kicked a chair toward Conan’s face to distract him as she attacked. He caught it with his left hand before it could hit him and slammed it against the skull of the Turanian foolish enough to attack from the side while the Aesir came at him from the front. Blood jetted from the man’s nostrils and ears as the side of his head caved in and he went down. Dealing ith the Turanian took only seconds, but that was more than enough time for the Aesir to hurl her hatchet at Conan as she ran. The weapon spun end over end as it flew toward his chest — aimed for the largest part of his body to have the best chance of a strike — and if Conan had been anyone else, the hatchet would have cut through his chainmail and into his breastbone. But the Cimmerian fought as much from instinct as from training and experience, and his sword arm moved of its own accord with cat-like swiftness, striking the hatchet’s metal head with a loud clang and swatting the weapon out of the air. p239

Sorcery & Abominations

Uzzeran continued chanting, his voice nearly deafening at this close distance. Loathsome tendrils of dark energy stretched from the ebon gem to penetrate the foreheads of both the boy and the creature. But as horrifying as this was, the worst part was the transformations that were occurring to each of Uzzeran’s test subjects. patches of scales would arise on the boy’s flesh, only to fade, and the snake-head’s scales would be replaced by smooth, human skin in places, only to revert to their original shape and texture. In addition, each subject’s face took on aspects of the other’s, the boy’s features became more reptilian, the snake-head’s more human. The changes to their bodies appeared and disappeared every few seconds, and watching the cycle repeat revolted Conan on a primal level… An additional pair of black tendrils lanced forth from the mystic orb and came at Conan and Valja so fast that neither of them had time to react. The tendrils struck their chests and entered their bodies with ease, as if flesh and bone were no more substantial than air to them… p123

Characterization

[Anot] has been raised to worship the Old Serpent and as a child regularly witnessed the sacrifice of outsiders to the dread demon-god. She had cheered and clapped along with the others as priests plunged sharp stone blades into the chests of nonbelievers and tore out their still-beating hearts from their bodies and held them up for all to see. She had marveled at the great black snakes that slithered forth from the jungles to devour those hearts and then sway hypnotically, as if dancing to silent, dark music. At times, parents overcome with religious fervor would snatch up one of their children and rush forward to offer it to the serpents, who swallowed the little ones with ease, especially the infants. Anot had lived in fear her parents would offer her to the giant snakes one night, but they never did. Instead they sacrificed her older brother, Onor, to Damballah’s avatars, and she had watched in horror as Onor slid down one of the serpent’s throats, his muffled screams still audible from inside the monster… p79

Tower of the Serpent in Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Wait, there’s more Scourge of the Serpent?

This is a stand-alone book! But notice the byline on the cover, it is a Scourge of the Serpent Novel. At first, I thought, ‘Cool, there will be more novels.’ That is not the case, but there are six associated Scourge of the Serpent comics. Heroic Signatures orchestrated a mini-series of sorts that tied several comics to this book.  Jim Zub, lead writer of Conan Comics, explained the reading order on his blog and it was later expanded on HowToLove Comics. In short, the series kicks off with a free comic book (available online), connects to a prelude in a Conan and Savage Sword of Conan comic, and those flow into a series of four comics connected to this novel. The tour guide is provided below!

Scourge of the Serpent reading order (link to tour guide):

Below is the reading order for Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent. It includes the core miniseries, prelude comics, and even a tie-in novel.

1. Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent – Free Comic Book Day 2025 (Prelude). Written by Jim Zub. Art by Ivan Gil.  Link to  free digital copy
2. Savage Sword of Conan (2025) #10 (Prelude). Written by Jim Zub. Art by Doug Braithwaite.
3. Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent #1 (of 4). Written by Jim Zub. Art by Ivan Gil.

4. Conan the Barbarian: Spawn of the Serpent God (tie-in novel, written by Tim Waggoner

5. Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent #2 (of 4) Written by Jim Zub. Art by Ivan Gil.
6. Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent #3 (of 4) Written by Jim Zub. Art by Ivan Gil.
7. Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent #4 (of 4) Written by Jim Zub. Art by Ivan Gil.

Don’t want to track down the comics individually?

You can get five of the six in a single book on May 5, 2026. It will have all but the Savage Sword #10 issue; or in other words, Conan the Barbarian: Scourge of the Serpent collects Conan: Scourge of the Serpent #1-4 and Conan the Barbarian Free Comic (i.e., #1,3,5,6,7 from this list, covers featured in image).

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S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books and interviewing authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.” He has taken lead roles organizing the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium (chairing it in 2023), is the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group, and was an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As for crafting stories, he has contributed eight entries across Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series, and has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies. He independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction; short stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone Amateur S&S Magazine, Swords & Sorcery online magazine, Rogues In the House Podcast’s A Book of Blades Vol I & II, DMR’s Terra Incognita, the 9th issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Savage Realms Magazine, and Michael Stackpole’s S&S Chain Story 2 Project.