Thank you to Little, Brown Book Group and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

While some of John Gwynne's books have been on my TBR for a couple of years now, The Wolves of War is the first time I have (finally) delved into a book penned by this illustrious fantasy author.

Gwynne's writing style felt new to me, but is so well done, so rich and immersive.

The Wolves of War is very much character-driven, something that I really loved. As with any good book utilising multiple POVs, when something good starts to happen with one character, the author changes the character POV in the next chapter and you just have to keep reading to ultimately return back to that character and find out what happens next...except this happened with every chapter, with every character and I ate it up. I was keen to reach the exciting point of the book when the characters inevitably start to converge - and oh boy did the book deliver when this happened! The final third of the book is spectacular.

There is a wide cast of characters, but Gwynne has made it so easy for the reader to get to know each one of them. I think by the end of the book my favourite characters were Ivan, Root, Halia and Dagnar - but maybe that is Gwynne's intention. The morality and heart of the characters really shone for me, and made these characters truly come to life, especially through their dialogue. And special mention goes to the use of 'onion breath' as an insult.

It feels obvious to say that fans of The Witcher game and series will enioy this, given the use of Slavic mythology, though that may not necessarily be the case. I think it is simply more accurate to say that fans of The Witcher will be familiar with several of the mythological creates that appear throughout the book. That being said, I would highly recommend this book to fantasy fans that love character-driven books (I'm thinking of Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderings), and those who love their epic fantasy.

Anyway, I'm off to go read some more John Gwynne while I await the next and final instalment of this epic duology!