Dark Crusade

My first Sword & Sorcery book! ...and a great read! Wagner's writing is impressive and exciting...dark imagery, literary metaphors and fun to follow. He is very detailed on the battle scenes ; it appears he is very knowledgable about military tactics, devices, ect...Good characters, but there is little history of them and not much world building in this novel. It is mostly atmosphere, scenery, action - and a solid plot. I was very curious about the world and the early developments of Kane, our main character and sword-wielding bad ass. The ending is a cosmic horror head twist! This was exciting and now I am looking for more books like this that will satisfy my interest in S&S.

Ancient evil is loosed in north when dark being finds a suitable carrier in form of one-time thief and bandit. Soon entire city is under influence and large human wave begins its invasion of southern kingdoms killing and pillaging everyone and everything on their way.
At this point Kane enters the stage – ancient human sentenced to wander the world and serve the others as punishment for the crime he committed. Misinterpreting the events [and following his dream to establish himself as a ruler instead of being just one of many hired swords] he joins the invasion force by offering his military expertise to train dark legions into formidable army. To do this (and advance his own coup d’etat) Kane brings his own men to form the core of show more the new army and starts the conquest expecting that his time will come soon to take over the new territories for himself.
But soon he realizes grave error he made and finally turns against the very evil he served.

Great story. Cannot wait to get my hands on more Kane stories. show less

Ancient evil is loosed in north when dark being finds a suitable carrier in form of one-time thief and bandit. Soon entire city is under influence and large human wave begins its invasion of southern kingdoms killing and pillaging everyone and everything on their way.[return]At this point Kane enters the stage ancient human sentenced to wander the world and serve the others as punishment for the crime he committed. Misinterpreting the events [and following his dream to establish himself as a ruler instead of being just one of many hired swords] he joins the invasion force by offering his military expertise to train dark legions into formidable army. To do this (and advance his own coup d etat) Kane brings his own men to form the core of show more the new army and starts the conquest expecting that his time will come soon to take over the new territories for himself.[return]But soon he realizes grave error he made and finally turns against the very evil he served.[return][return]Great story. Cannot wait to get my hands on more Kane stories. show less

Another book in the same vein - Kane sides with the villain, but eventually it all goes south. Overall, quite grimmy grim grimdark.

Good Kane stuff but a little disjointed.

The ending was a little confusing.

Kane gets twisted up into an insane dark god cult intent on conquering the world.