The Iron Wolves: Book 1 of The Rage of Kings

A nausea-inducing adventure, The Iron Wolves is an over-the-top story for the fantasy-lover with a strong stomach.

The adventure begins when 70-year-old General Dalgoran witnesses a gruesome scene at his own birthday party when an evil talking beast intrudes and kills a seer that was hired to tell his future. He feels it’s time to assemble the Iron Wolves, a handful of warriors who defeated the sorcerer Morkagoth, presumably in a preceding novel.

An evil witch-queen, Orlana, is rampaging across the land, forming “the splice,” an army of tortured, grotesque monsters. She is allowed to roam free because King Yoon, one of the rulers of Andy Remic’s garish, bleak world, has gone insane, cutting military forces to fund the building of a tower to the moon.

Remic doesn’t waste time depicting setting or location. Instead, much of the narrative is spent on depicting the many different ways to torture or kill a human being. The graphic images of death and violence would probably not be suitable for a younger reader or the faint-of-heart. It would have been a better work with more focus on plot rather than action.