COLD STEEL AND BLACK HEARTS – THE SPEARSLAYER SAGA
R. K. Olson
Published by Raven Tale Publishing, 2026
192 pages
Cold Steel and Black Hearts is made up of ten stories styled as chapters, representing the ongoing adventures of Dar the Spearslayer. They follow on from when the Spearslayer Sect has been annihilated at the Battle of the Golga River by an alliance of its enemies. After their defeat its soldiers are put to the sword, and any survivors are labelled outlaws to be hunted down and killed. This is the opening premise for the adventures of Dar.
Determined to find his wife, son and daughter, who like all the other Spearslayer wives and children have been sold into slavery, Dar travels from city to city, forced to disguise himself as anything other than a Spearslayer because, as there is on every other survivor of the massacre, a price has been placed on his head.
On the way, he is unwillingly forced to participate in various adventures, often against his will. Local problems are secondary to him to finding his family, but life is too complex for him to avoid becoming embroiled in other matters, however temporarily.
Dar is a long way from the carefree adventurer, roaming his world in search of ill-gotten riches. He is no freebooter, but a man consumed with an almost impossible goal. But he is a man who is determined, whatever the odds, to accomplish his self-imposed mission and nothing will stand in his way.
There are many levels of tension in these stories: there is the tension created by the next dangerous situation he comes up against, whether it is human or supernatural. There is also the tension of his search for what has happened to his family, whether they are alive or dead, whether they are still free or have been sold into slavery, and you can feel his frustration when other things come in his way, and he has to deal with these first before getting back to his primary mission.
These are gritty, well written tales, with a distinctly different kind of hero.
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