All in Voramis know the legend of the Hunter. Relentless. Immortal. Death walking. The greatest assassin who ever lived.

Pay the master killer his due and the Hunter will execute any target, carry out any contract, no matter how impossible.

But when the Bloody Hand crime syndicate harms the innocents under his protection, they foolishly make an enemy of the one man they can’t afford to anger. The price of the Hunter’s vengeance is high—paid in blood and eternal damnation. Not even an army of crooks, cutthroats, and demonic creatures of nightmare can stand in his way.

He’s far more than just one man…he’s the Keeper-damned Hunter of Voramis.

Dark. Bloody. Brilliant. A book that will squeeze your heart until your soul bleeds.

While not a new release, this is the most impressive dark fantasy story I read this year, and this is just the beginning of the epic saga that is Peloquin’s Darkblade. In ways more than one, this tale felt like a distillation of everything I want in grimdark fantasy packaged in a format that felt tailored just for me.

Faceless, nameless, and yet with countless names and faces, the Hunter walks among his prey.

The initial part of the book feels almost like a male power fantasy. Our protagonist, the infamous Hunter of Voramis, comes across as something of a medieval superhero, nigh invincible, and through his eyes we explore the dark, decrepit city he calls home for reasons not known even to him. We start off with a fairly conventional amnesiac-hero arc, with the hunter taking up dangerous contracts but restricting himself to killing only the ones deserving of a bloody fate. But then, as we approach the end of the first half, when we are getting comfortable with the flow of things and think we have a sense of how the plot is progressing, the author flips the proverbial switch. And you suddenly find yourself drowning in blood and gasping for breath.

If you are the kind of reader who prefers to look away from the gruesome scenes while trying to enjoy the rest of the story, you might want to sit this one out. It may not be apparent from the initial few pages, but this is not the book for you. Best enjoyed by readers with an appetite for grim violence, this narrative is packed to the brim with raw, heart-wrenching action.

Fight or die. The words echoed in his thoughts. A mantra, a lifeline to which he clung.

The action sequences are where this book truly shines. Peloquin’s depictions are now the gold standard of exhilarating action for me. Rather than opting for radical experimentation, the author adopts well-trodden approaches, refining them at every step. The outcome is a deeply immersive experience that leaves no emotion untouched.

Avid readers of epic fantasy would perhaps not find the world-building to be particularly novel, but I loved the framework of gradual and incremental reinforcement of concepts. It gets a bit verbose at times but worked very well for me while reading the story in parts over long commutes. Despite a reasonably broad scope, it never feels overwhelming. With every chapter, we discover deeper layers of the characters and the world, and I found the style of presentation very approachable and engaging.

2026 is looking pretty grim already.

“May the gods piss on your corpse as you scream in the flames of the fiery hell.”