Am I going to love a book with a main character who reacts to news of zombies with a resigned sigh and a heft of his sword? Yeah, probably.

I added this one to my list because of the constant reviews about how incredibly brutal the prose was, because I'm a bit of a violent barbarian that way. Egar fighting ghouls in the first twenty pages certainly made a vivid impression:

The first runner took the lance full in the chest and fell back, punched along with the velocity of the horse's charge, scrabbling and spitting blood. Egar reined in hard, twisted and withdrew the lance, quadrupled the size of the wound. Wet, rope-like organs came out on the serrated edges of the blade, tugged and tore and spilled pale fluids as he ripped the weapon clear.

Maybe I have grown to inured to violence because of the murder porn I have watched and read on the regular; The Steel Remains is more descriptive than other books of similar plot are, but I'm still not rearing back in horrified disgust. Maybe I just have different triggers than moist organs.

There are three different stories here that seem unconnected except by the past shared between the characters as veterans of a war against alien (but not extraterrestrial) invaders. As we move along between personal betrayal and mysterious Gods (Egar), investigating a burned village (Archeth) and attempting to recover a distant relative legally sold into slavery (Gil), the threads of the narrative start to form the tapestry of an alarming concept: immortal dimensional dwellers and old gods have come to call. And everything goes to shit. My favorite!

Honestly, my biggest complaint is the rotating POVs between the three main characters. It's not the fault of the book, which I think executed it very well, but mine as a reader. When I'm ~in the zone~, it's hard for me to switch gears like that. That's why it took me three tries to finish Game of Thrones. This worked out better because Gil, Egar and Archeth eventually meet up, their varied journeys conspiring to bring them to fight together once more.

And in the end, Gil kills the "monster" only to become the monster himself.