We flew no banner, and the wolf heads on our shields were faded. If any folk did see us they would avoid us because in a dangerous land we were the danger.

Dear Linči, 

after making a year long pause from The Saxon Chronicles I decided to return once more, if only to finish off a gigantic 13 part series, my longest to date and maybe the longest I'll ever dare to read. The Flame Bearer, the book preceding this one, delivered a final end to Uhtred's quest for his ancestral fortress of Bebbanburgh and with it, ended my immediate interest for the series. Bernard Cornwell is very skilled as portraying a bleak and morose earl medieval world, but skill itself can get jarring and repetitive if presented in the same way for a dozen books. I'm so glad to have taken the pause because War of the Wolf was a breath of fresh air both for the series and my interest in it. Cornwell never shies away from cutting ties with past characters, even outright killing them off, and this time, the guillotine came for the beloved Stiorra. As with Stiorra and many other players in Uhtred's saga, I wish she'd been given more exposition and development. The same can be said for Finnan who has been gallivanting around for I can't even remember how many books at this point and has gotten one notable development arc. Even so, the world really feels alive in this one. The politics matter and are presented in a very understandable way, the terrain is taken into account and so is the weather, the reader can really feel a part of the many journeys Uhtred takes across what is bound to become Englaland soon. As with every other Uhtred book, this one also finishes with a climactic battle, possibly the most fictitious and nebulous of them all. The battle itself doesn't really feel like much more than a cutscene in a game as there are no real stakes to grip the reader, but that's made up for with realistic descriptions of the battle's surroundings, it's aftermath and the minutiae of siege warfare (such as Uhtred being unable to continue fighting for a while after being hit in the head with a rock). I feel like this part of the series serves as a setup for much greater machinations to come and the tension between Northumbria and the rest of the kingdoms was really palpable, as well as the "wasp's nest" of West Saxon politics depicted during the WItan in Mercia. I'm really glad I'm back to this series, but I won't be forcing myself to continue it until the time is right.