During a recent dwarf civil-war deep under the Karamakkos Mountains, the magick-enslaved dragonlords have broken free from centuries of imprisonment and slaughtered tens of thousands throughout the Five Havens before exploding from the mountain and heading in fire and vengeance for the lands of Vagandrak. Two once-noble war heroes of Vagandrak - Dakeroth and his wife Jonti Tal, an archer and scholar, the Axeman, the White Witch and a Kaalesh combat expert find themselves in a unique position: for they have discovered the ancient dragon city of Wyrmblood, and a thousand unhatched dragon eggs. Dakeroth and his companions must work with their enemies, Skalg and the Church of Hate, in order to bring down the dragonlords and save the world of men and dwarves. But there is no bartering with these ancient dragons; for they seek to hatch their eggs and rebuild the cruel Wyrmblood Empire of legend.

Oh boy, remember the ultra-vulgar, bloody entertaining, almost pornographic novel The Dragon Engine by Andy Remic? Its sequel was recently released and ended up on my desk. I read it, and I hugely enjoyed it despite its flaws. Here's why.

The Story:

"During a recent dwarf civil-war deep under the Karamakkos Mountains, the magick-enslaved dragonlords have broken free from centuries of imprisonment and slaughtered tens of thousands throughout the Five Havens before exploding from the mountain and heading in fire and vengeance for the lands of Vagandrak. Two once-noble war heroes of Vagandrak - Dakeroth and his wife Jonti Tal, an archer and scholar, the Axeman, the White Witch and a Kaalesh combat expert find themselves in a unique position: for they have discovered the ancient dragon city of Wyrmblood, and a thousand unhatched dragon eggs. Dakeroth and his companions must work with their enemies, Skalg and the Church of Hate, in order to bring down the dragonlords and save the world of men and dwarves. But there is no bartering with these ancient dragons; for they seek to hatch their eggs and rebuild the cruel Wyrmblood Empire of legend."

The Review:

Twilight of the Dragons is an oddly entertaining book. It is still vulgar, "offensive" and unrecommendable to younger readers, but also in many ways different from The Dragon Engine. Not in a bad way, however.

Where with The Dragon Engine I was utterly unprepared for the vulgarity, sex jokes, assault, torture and what have you, having me wince at the ideas presented by Andy Remic (reading about "ball crushers" was pretty grim!), I was definitely prepared for more of the like in Twilight. To my surprise, those aspects were tackled to a lesser degree here. Instead the book focused more on the characters' resignation, fears, trauma and the rampage of the dragons in Vagandrak.

Surprisingly, this novel also throws a crossover with Remic's Iron Wolves novels at us: The heroes from The Iron Wolves and The White Towers appear here, stealing a lot of the spotlight. This, of course, includes spoilers for their own novels, seeing that this is a sequel, chronologically.
I honestly wish I had read those novels before I did Twilight, but after the fact I cannot say that, while I was initially not so keen on it, I disliked their inclusion. In fact, I liked all of the crossover-characters a good bit. They were easily relatable, had a decent amount of comedic relief (one part of which even crops back up in the epilogue and had me laughing out loud!), and gave a much-needed perspective of the dragon rampage outside the mountains that the heroes are stuck in for pretty much the entire novel.

Disappointingly, the heroes, that is, Beetrax, Lilith, Sakora, Dake, Talon and the boy Jael, are stuck underground until the very end, and as a result don't even encounter Volak and her sisters for most of it. I had expected them to be the driving force when it comes to subjugating the dragons again, but instead the futility of that task was tackled via the Iron Wolves chapters. For the original heroes from The Dragon Engine, oddly little happens in terms of external threats, comparatively. There is one battle against a dragon-splice which I liked a lot, and some dwarf-killing, but until the climax chapters (and I don't mean those involving past romance scenes between Beetrax and Lilith with that!) they're fighting themselves and their own insecurities more than anything else.

Which, as a theme, I liked. None of them were left unaffected by the preceding events, the torture, the lack of sunlight, and most notably the death of Jonti Tal, Dake's wife. They're traumatized, growing in apathy and start turning on one another. Of course, equiem magic plays a role in it as well, raising the stakes to a higher point. The point stands, however: Their quest to find and destroy the dragon eggs of Volak isn't easy, and that is more down to their own sensibilities and fraying nerves than to outside forces.

In a way, this made the inclusion of the Iron Wolves inevitable. The action against Volak was necessary to the book, both to get the tension up and to balance the depressing nature of the other parts of the book. Remic nailed the conflict on the surface very well, too; Narnok, Dek, Trista and co were all amusing to read about, and their struggles to somehow manage to harm and/or kill Volak were offering up cool setpieces. Narnok especially had me chuckling over how absurd it was for him to constantly taunt the mighty dragon queen.

“I’m Narnok. Don’t forget it. It’s a name I’m going to carve on your arse.”

It was a massively entertaining romp of thrilling action, with ever-growing desperation and things just got better and better. I was incredibly sad when, inevitably, heads began to roll (or ashes got blown into the wind, eh?). Andy managed to make me care about characters that came out of the blue and stole the fireworks show, giving them a personal background that I enjoyed and made me curious about the rest of their story. Yes, I was definitely disappointed that it wasn't down to Beetrax and co, but what I got instead was no less entertaining than what I expected.

The dragon rampage itself is worth noting too. The prologue kicks it off, set right after the end of The Dragon Engine. Volak, Kranesh and Moraxx are free to do as they please: which just so happens to be slaughtering humans. If you're not a fan of seeing children die, then you might want to back out of this one, because the story starts right with that; it gets us to care about a little girl who finally made a friend and has fun playing around, just to be eaten alive. That had me gulp - I didn't expect that kind of thing within the first 5 pages! But damn if it didn't set the scene for just how terrible a renewed Blood Dragon Empire would be!

Multiple similar scenes of disaster are featured throughout the book, up until the dragons get their dues through no other than Skalg. Where in The Dragon Engine I had nothing but disdain for the fucker, here I actually cared for him as an individual. The author managed to humanize him a great deal, giving him a layered personality and personal dilemma. He is made relatable in his role, and showcases how mountains of frustration and pain can come tumbling down and break our own backs.
In a way, Skalg is the real hero of the book, which surprised me. He is still a megalomaniac and doesn't get off lightly, but he definitely pulls more than his own weight to resolve the looming doom. Remic definitely addressed Skalg's situation in a satisfying way.

If you're a fan of the sexual themes from The Dragon Engine, the book has you covered too. Not only does it have some orgies going on involving Vagandrak royalty, involving an arrogant princess trying to rape her soldier-become-servant, but it also has some more romantic flashbacks for Beetrax and Lilith.
I honestly cannot believe how well-done the romance in the latter actually was. It was actually nice, and sweet, and made me care even more about the couple. It wasn't blunt and on the nose, and instead reinforced their relationship as a whole.
More than anything, those scenes were relatable, authentic and respectful. They hammered home just how much of these two books was actually about Trax and Lil and their reunion. Those heartwarming scenes raised the stakes for the depressing underground excursion tenfold, and had me raging as the climax came about.

My regrets about the novel, after all is said and done, boil down to the original heroes taking a bit too much of a step back. While I liked the themes and execution, I figured they'd be more prominent here. It wasn't a dealbreaker by any means, but I was wishing for them to be more involved.
On top of that, there are various plot nuggets that weren't resolved, and deliberately left open. The epilogue makes it pretty clear that there is room for sequels yet, tying all the way back to the Iron Wolves books (and I'll damn well read those before I get into the next one), but there's more to be said about the Dragonheads, King Yoon, the remaining Splice in Vagandrak and a bunch of side characters who I figured would contribute a bit more yet.

Be that as it may, I think I enjoyed Twilight of the Dragons even more than I did The Dragon Engine. It flowed well, I cared for the whole, larger cast and the dragons were magnificent to behold. The action was great, the personal drama high, and I'd like to read more about all involved.
If you've read The Dragon Engine, you owe it to yourself to read this one as well.

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Five noble war heroes of Vagandrak get drunk one night and sign a contract – to journey to the Karamakkos in search of the Five Havens where, it is written, there is untold, abandoned wealth and, more importantly, the three Dragon Heads – jewels claimed to give unspeakable power and everlasting life to those who wield them.

But the Dragon Heads aren’t what they think, and the world has not encountered their like in generations!

This one is a highly divisive novel, which I didn't realize going in. Not for the faint-hearted or prude, that's for sure. However, I quite enjoyed it.

The Story:

"Five noble war heroes of Vagandrak get drunk one night and sign a contract – to journey to the Karamakkos in search of the Five Havens where, it is written, there is untold, abandoned wealth and, more importantly, the three Dragon Heads – jewels claimed to give unspeakable power and everlasting life to those who wield them.

But the Dragon Heads aren’t what they think, and the world has not encountered their like in generations!"

The Review:

The Dragon Engine is a controversial novel - and for good reason. It is full of adult humor (or juvenile humor, depending on who you're asking), and explicit, sexual content (both in the positive and negative sense).
So if you are uncomfortable with that, do not even think of picking this book up, or you'll regret the money spent. If you're unsure, get the sample, which should include the start of the chapter "Skalg", which tackles the reader with some very explicit scenes right off the bat.

If you can get over those explicit contents, you'll find a novel that very much resembles a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The protagonists are a diverse bunch, three men, three women, including a bisexual archer, a supposedly-pacifist witch/healer who is also vegetarian, a ginger, one-eyed, stubborn axeman and so on. It really covers a bunch of the tropes and character classes you'd find in most pen & paper roleplaying games, with the added bonus of all of these six characters being veterans of a previous war (which seems to be covered in Remic's other books). As a result you have them wax nostalgically about the good old days and past glories, and decide to go on one last adventure together.

This adventure sees them going on a treasure hunt, searching for the lost dwarven cities under the mountain Karamakkos. Things don't go as planned (at all), even from the outset, and the group of heroes just tumbles from one problem to the next.
I actually found that really entertaining, as it resulted in a lot of comedic problem solving - until about halfway through the book, when they actually enter the dwarven realm and things take a massive turn for the worst.

Spoiler, highlight to read!

The group gets captured and put to slave labor in the mines of the thought-extinct race. But since they weren't compliant enough, they go through a very long chapter of torture, which sent each and every one of them through hell. This involves mutilation, threat of castration and ball-crushing, psycho-terror, rape and more.

It really wasn't pretty and, again, if you're faint-hearted, move on.

However, it did provide some very neat insights into the characters. For the most part the book focuses on Beetrax the axeman, and his past love with Lillith. We get the biggest chunks of background on them, whereas the others are less obvious in their background details. During their rough time in the Five Havens, all of them are confronted with their own fears and insecurities, and became more interesting to me. But then, I also hated those scenes for making me worry so much, and being utterly relentless. They were some of the moments where I genuinely wanted the antagonists to die in hell.

The antagonists themselves are well-established and actually evil, especially Cardinal Skalg of the Church of Hate, who is a despicable prick of the highest degree. There isn't really much I want to say about his role here, as it has a bunch of twists I don't want to spoil. But you will hate him. There is nothing redeemable about him, and there doesn't need to be. But then, few, if any, of the dwarves can be said good things about. They're an isolated race of awful people, selfish, brutal, hateful. Just the kind of mess you wouldn't want to run into.

And then we have the Dragon Engine itself, a machine utilizing enslaved metal dragons to power the dwarven cities. There isn't as much about this in the book as I was expecting, but when it hits, it is with a sledgehammer and turns the book upside down, with a gigantic cliffhanger for Twilight of the Dragons. I'm very excited to dig into that sequel, with how this story (hasn't) wrapped up here.

The Dragon Engine really is a mixed bag that will divide readers (and already has). There is sexually explicit content here in bucket loads, some relatively tasteful, other parts excessively detailed to the point where I was cringing, thinking that a curtain call would have fitted the scene better. Little is left ambiguous, and characters are foul-mouthed (especially Beetrax and the antagonists) throughout the whole book. But then, there are genuinely well-written human relationships here too, with the group of six splitting into three couples of different stages. There is plenty of humor here to balance the grim, though it takes second fiddle once things get darker in the mines. While some may react with eyerolls at Beetrax in particular, I thought him to be a well-presented character with more depth than immediately obvious, and often quite funny.

More than anything though, this book has made me want to play DnD. Getting a group together and just start a silly adventure with characters who poke fun at one another all the time, but also stick up for one another when it counts. If you told me this was originally based off of one long campaign Remic had with friends, I could well believe it, and it maintains the lighthearted tone of such sessions, despite the grim parts.

As such, I quite enjoyed my time with The Dragon Engine, though I cannot make a clear-cut recommendation for it. It really comes down to your own sensibilities and tastes, and state of mind. You might praise it for its unashamed style, or hate it for its crudeness. I can only recommend trying the sample to see if you can stomach it.

The Dragon Engine on Goodreads

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A war is being waged in an impossible world.
The Skogsgra and the Naravelle have launched their final offensive, and Private Jones and his companions are caught in the melee.
Tens of thousands will die before the battle is over.
They travel deep underground, to find and release the Iron Beast... the one creature that can end not one world war, but two.
But at what cost . . . ?

The Iron Beast is the high-octane conclusion to Remic’s phenomenal Song For No Man’s Land trilogy.

This is the final book in the A Song for No Man's Land trilogy. I reviewed the others, and finished this one while on vacation in the US.

The Story:

"A war is being waged in an impossible world.
The Skogsgra and the Naravelle have launched their final offensive, and Private Jones and his companions are caught in the melee.
Tens of thousands will die before the battle is over.
They travel deep underground, to find and release the Iron Beast... the one creature that can end not one world war, but two.
But at what cost . . . ?

The Iron Beast is the high-octane conclusion to Remic’s phenomenal Song For No Man’s Land trilogy."

Disclaimer

I received an ARC for this book, like I did with the previous installment, Return of Souls. I originally picked up A Song for No Man's Land myself, so this was a great chance to get through the trilogy months ahead of time!

The Review:

The Iron Beast delivers the final piece in the A Song for No Man's Land trilogy, and offers answers to a lot of questions I had over the course of the previous two novellas. As I said in my previous reviews, I wasn't quite sure about this series. With this book wrapping it up, I feel more confident recommending it as a whole.

This one picks right back up from where Return of Souls left off. Robert Jones and Orana are on the way to her village, where they meet her family, most notably her father Jorian, who takes a prominent role in the rest of the book.

The Tommy quickly finds himself shunned by the villagers and Jorian, and is confronted with his own war-torn appearance. But the village is running out of time, and Jones has to go find the Stoneway to unleash the Iron Beast to end all wars, while Jorian and co are fending off the Naravelle offensive from their trenches.

Jones' journey quickly gets weird, utilizing more fantasy elements and combining both wars into one horror. Hints and prophecies from the first and second book come into play and start to make sense (sort of), with a climax that was both impressive and emotional.

Once again, I really enjoyed the trench warfare and the exploration of Jones' psyche. There was a chapter I mentioned in my review for Return of Souls, which was horrifying and traumatising, and said plotline got a proper follow-up here. This one was similarly traumatising if for different reasons - and I loved it. Likewise, Jones' confrontation with Jorian, which ends up rather badly for the soldier, and his situation within this new village, result in compelling diary entries.

Jones' experiences within the Stoneway, too, were compelling to read about. They provided a big contrast to the action back with Jorian and co, but one that I found satisfying and necessary. It added to the fantastical feeling of the series while making the reader contemplate the great wars in different terms. And by the end, it all came together nicely to provide a message that gives a certain sense of hope.

But then there are also some things and details that didn't quite add up for me. While most of my questions were answered, some new aspects were introduced that might have needed a little more fleshing out. Of course, leaving some mysteries unresolved can be interesting and necessary for a story to have more impact - and this happened here as well - but I still felt that clearer answers might have been nice in places. This includes, for example, the Walriders' fascination with and desire for Jones' eyes, and seeing through them, but also the Skogsgrå, who has been pulling strings ever since the start of the first book.

After all is said and done, The Iron Beast ends on a bittersweet note. Whether Remic will return to the setting again or not is to be seen, but if he does, there should be plenty of hooks to link into. But even without more content, A Song for No Man's Land feels complete and satisfying. There is some real payoff in this final installment that should satisfy everyone who got invested into Robert Jones' life over the past two books.

I don't regret my time with the trilogy. The psychological aspects alone made it worth diving into, and Remic's depictions of WW1 had the ideal tone. The Iron Beasts returns a bit of that feel via the Naravelle offensive, and I appreciated that.
Overall, I wasn't entirely keen on Orana, or rather how easily Jones fell for her. However, it is still plausible that he would, due to his situation being as screwed up as it is. It also felt more real in this final volume, so I don't begrudge it.

It won't be for everyone, but I was satisfied and "happy" with the book. If you enjoy dark, psychological military fantasy, this might be your cup of tea.

The Iron Beast on Goodreads

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If war is hell, there is no word to describe what Private Jones has been through. Forced into a conflict with an unknowable enemy, he awakes to find himself in a strange land, and is soon joined by young woman, Morana, who tends to his wounds and tells him of the battles played out in this impossible place.

She tells him of an Iron Beast that will end the Great War, and even as he vows to help her find it, enemy combatants seek them, intent on their utter annihilation.

Return of Souls is the second volume of the trilogy Andy Remic began with A Song for No Man's Land.

A Song for No Man's Land had me intrigued, but Return of Souls has me wondering. I hope things get clearer in the final novel. Either way, here's my review.

The Story:

"If war is hell, there is no word to describe what Private Jones has been through. Forced into a conflict with an unknowable enemy, he awakes to find himself in a strange land, and is soon joined by young woman, Morana, who tends to his wounds and tells him of the battles played out in this impossible place.

She tells him of an Iron Beast that will end the Great War, and even as he vows to help her find it, enemy combatants seek them, intent on their utter annihilation.
Return of Souls is the second volume of the trilogy Andy Remic began with A Song for No Man's Land."

Disclaimer

The publisher offered me an ARC of the novel. I was highly intrigued by the predecessor when I read it earlier this year, so I jumped at the opportunity.

The Review:

As with A Song for No Man's Land, Return of Souls performed the best for me when it was dealing with Robert Jones' life in the trenches of the Great War. His mental health is rapidly declining, spiralling out of control to the point where the lines between reality and hallucination, or fantasy, are blurring.

On many occassions, I found myself questioning just what was really going on. What did Jones go through, compared to what he felt and saw. And I loved that. The war has ground him down, and the loss of his friends weighs heavy on his chest. The delivery was fantastic in those early chapters, up to the second third.

And then things changed drastically. The multi-dimensional war that was hinted at in the previous installment moved onto the stage, and Jones finds himself in a different place entirely, the only familiar things being the Walriders that have haunted him all along, and the ever-present threat of war. About halfway through, Return of Souls had crossed the line from dark military fiction with a heavy psychology angle into fantasy, albeit still with a psychological angle.

When the girl Orana entered the picture and Jones quickly fell for her, things started to drag a little for me, and again I started questioning what was going on. That is a major theme of the novel, as it answers few questions while posing countless new ones. Aspects of A Song for No Man's Land that I was hoping would be elaborated on were seemingly forgotten, or at the very least left for the third novel to connect to the ongoing narrative.

One disappointment for me was that there was only one single chapter delving back into Robert's childhood, back to the sanatorium that the first book showed as more than just a little traumatic for the bloke. That chapter was very short, but to the point. It had me put the book down and update my Goodreads status with a resounding "What the ——?!". The absolute disgust and pity I felt after that chapter got to me - as it was supposed to, so Remic scores a big point here.

At the end of it all, I enjoyed the adventure with Jones and Orana, even though it left me a bit dissatisfied for answers. Thankfully, it looks like Robert is as lost as me, and all too willing to trust strangers in that strange place. I'm definitely on board to find out what is going to happen next, after some big twists in the final chapters.

If Andy Remic can manage to tie everything together and elaborate on the situation in The Iron Beast, I'll salute him. I have my ideas about what is going on already, but I clearly need the third installment to make proper sense of it. For what it is, though, Return of Souls is a solid psychological mystery that makes me yearn for more.

Return of Souls on Goodreads

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He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.

But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.

He'll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn't exist.

Starting in January 2016, I went on a bit of a novella-binge. I picked up a bunch of them, and found some gems in the process. A Song for No Man's Land is one of those.

The Story:

"He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.

But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.

He'll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn't exist."

The Review

A Song for No Man's Land truly is an odd one. It is far more of a historical soldier's tale set during World War I than a fantasy, and yet a fantasy story it is. I somehow wonder if it had to be, though.

The supernatural elements only really creep in as part of the reality of the plot in the final chapters, and personally, that was too late. I would have been fine without it, or having them be down to the characters' deteriorating psyche and closeness to death's door. But then things moved quickly, and I scratched my head. Things came out of left field, and somehow it tainted some very strong scenes that had me captivated already.

And yet still it held a certain charme, and I want to know where this series will be going with it all. The characters of Robert Jones, George Webb and Charlie Bainbridge all had a good amount of depth and development to them, and a sense of humanity. They all brought the desperation of being involved in the Great War to the fore in different ways. They all were broken, both by the war and their prior life experiences. And yet they were all sympathetic in my eyes, at least most of the time.

It is down to the gritty trench warfare that focused so much on the characters, their mental state, their behavior under unsurmountable stress, and the repetitiveness of their lives in the army, that my rating is the way it is. I liked it, I did very much. It clicked for me, and I even enjoyed the traumatic flashback sequences throughout.
But I also believe that this could have easily been a better story had it been a one-shot, without the supernatural spin. Up until the finale, few changes would need to be made at all to turn this from a good into an excellent novella. The anti-war message remains strong and the shrapnel cuts deep, but in the end the effects felt blunted.
Either way, I'll be reading the sequel.

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