If we are defined by our enemies, then make an enemy of hatred; thus teaches Jorg's tutor. This is the only, paraphrased, sentence in the book which can be described as upbeat. Jorg does not agree with his tutor.

Prince Jorg of Ancrath, 15 years old when we meet him, is a very depressed 6-foot-tall kid. He saw his mother, a Queen, raped and murdered in front of him. He saw his little 5-year-old brother, Prince William, destroyed without mercy, head smashed into a posted sign. In running for his 9-year-old life, he crashed into a thorn bush which stabbed him in a hundred places on his skin and he was stuck, hanging there for hours, so the murderers, Count Renar's men, laughingly left him there sure he would die. He survived the assassination attack, but the poison of hate sank deeper than the thorns. His father, the King, couldn't wait to remarry and forget. So, at the age of ten, Jorg builds himself a team of anti-heroes, criminal psychopaths to a man with the exception of two, and leads his troop of dirty rotten bastards into a desperado life of rape, torture and murder. While planning on killing Count Renar when he feels ready, every move he makes as a gleeful murderer and torturer for the next five years hardens him to the feelings of others. He glories in bloody bits of folk strewn under his feet. He becomes an expert at killing children and burning down towns, and he even faces down ghosts in a graveyard. He becomes the stinking unbathed leader of his gory sword gang of equally disgusting smelly men who only best him in rotting teeth.

hA! What an enormous piece of crap this book is! But it's such damn gOOd crap! I didn't know how I'd feel about this one until I finished it, and now that I have, I'm giggling. Couldn't help it. I'm not supposed to be giggling. It's deadly serious, violent, horrific, stomach turning, and unrelentingly dark and sad. However, it reminded me of a performance art project by a great writer who stopped taking his anti-depression meds. It's highly stylized, written without a single sign of humor, hope, love, or affection, but still the flourishes of every sentence are more than excellent, they are poetic.

The writing is superb! Such incredible descriptive skill; it bowled me over. If it wasn't for the relentlessly dark plot, the completely evil protagonists who do not even pretend to want redemption (and the author doesn't give it) and the 300-pages-long moaning of Jorg's depressive grief and hate, all of which kinda inured me after awhile despite the constant maiming action, I'd be a fan. The author doesn't linger on each violent episode and I would not call this kill-pornography - not hardcore, anyway. But there is a lot of nastiness in every chapter mixed in with imaginative world building, adventures and a touch of magic and magical beings.

Some decades ago, tapes of whales groaning to each other were the wonder of the week in the media. Whale songs are eerily captivating, but as weirdly beautiful are the songs whales sing, they ended up being just cool sounds for ten minutes. This book caused a similar reaction from me. I cannot praise the writing enough, but it is pointless whale song.

Although it had me snorting with mirth by the end, I'm not sure why, but I am going to call the story a quest satire, even if it isn't supposed to be. As it is, even though I'm giving this five stars because it is good, and it has what is required of a compelling angry young man read, it's a basic sword-and-sorcery tale (the first in a series) with a heavy-metal music video feel, a post-apocalyptic graphic comic novel with hopeless heavily-muscled, death-seeking males on testosterone crack, high on the joy of smelling the voided contents of their victims. I'm giving the series a pass.