My Review
Set several years after the previous Empire of the Wolf Grimdark Magazine novella, The Scour, we rejoin Vonvalt and Bressinger in Sova. Vonvalt is not a happy bunny; the love of his life, Justice Resi August has announced her engagement, and a killer has escaped an asylum.
There’s not much he can do about Resi.
Instead he’s heading, in the midwinter cold, to the town of Eisbruck to track a killer by his snake skin boots, along with Bressinger, a shoemaker named Anna, and eventually a priest. Except Eisbruck is in the middle of a smallpox outbreak.
I enjoyed this novella, I got really immersed in the story. Swan describes the conditions in a town overwhelmed by disease and death in the middle of winter convincingly. The search for the killer is hampered by the deaths surrounding Sir Conrad. Bressinger gets sick quickly, despite having partial immunity from childhood cowpox, and Anna mysteriously dies without a mark on her. There is a rumoured witch Vonvalt has to uncover and hallucinations caused by contact with a forest herb that complicates matters.
The novella adds to the backstory for the Empire of the Wolf novels and explores parts of the Sovan Empire that they don’t . Recommended to fans of the series, and if you haven’t tried the novels, this novella will give you a taste of the style, setting, and characters.
