Grimluk is an orc with one purpose: hunting demons.

For the past month, Grimluk has traveled with his newly adopted sister, Gwen Quinn. Grimluk hopes to find the cause and cure for the prophetic spirit trapped in Gwen. The journey isn’t without its perils though. Near dark one evening, an angry and monstrous apparition attacks them, nearly crushing Grimluk under its enormous spiritual weight. It demands one thing; to be taken home.

The thing leads them to a town called Perfection. A man known as the Hanging Judge runs the town, holding tight to law and order. Almost immediately, Grimluk is arrested, charged with kidnapping and murder. The Judge takes Gwen and imprisons Grimluk. Trapped and separated, the pair learn all too quickly that something else haunts the town besides a ghost. And the only escape might be at the end of a rope.

Contains disturbing imagery, strong language, gaslighting, and strong violence.

I received a review copy of this book, which does not affect my thoughts. 

This is the second book in the Grimlurk, Demon Hunter series, a fun wild west adventure with a seasoned Orc demon hunter, an isolated mining town, and a powerful demon. The first book was really fun read and I’m all in for this Clint Eastwood orc business, and the second one took everything I liked from the first one and added a lot of aww.

This wild-west demon-hunting adventure with tons of flashy battles and big orcish orcs turned out more sweet and wholesome than it had any right to. There’s still a lot of kicking ass and shooting guts all over the place, but for me, the star of this book was Gwen’s personal journey and how the orcish family embraced here.

While I enjoyed the first book as good popcorny fun, I thought this one made for a more well-rounded story. Grimluk goes home to his family with his newly adopted sister, Gwen. The family and the whole orc town are just so great and supportive of each other. I loved it, especially the context of the big gruff exterior bakes great cookies interior, and a super cute old established couple for the win, I love that. More old couples in fantasy pls ty.

Much as I liked the orcs (and elf), this book was all about Gwen for me. She goes through so much and she gains so much strength and agency and everything. I was really thrown by that, because Grim’s pretty established, we see new sides to him and he does have some growth, but then Gwen comes along and blows it all out of the water. And I think it’s not easy writing kids that are both child-like and competent but this worked really well for me. It was my favorite part of the book.

The story itself follows the same idea, small western town, demon to be hunted. There are mad demon-battles, heads exploding gore all over the place, it’s wild. The pacing/structure of the book was a bit weird for me as there was a really big tense moment about halfway through, and then a slowing down and regrouping, so I was kinda confused there for a bit. That probably says more about how used I am to certain story beats than anything else though.

The villain’s just a pure old-fashion baddie that does unthinkable things, you can rightly say that he’s pretty shallow but I just really didn’t mind, it was very satisfying to want him dead and at least he wasn’t based on lazy-ass cliches * cough I’m still angry about Dune cough cough *

I also really liked how this book had more background info about the world, bits of history and also new mysteries about spirits acting in strange ways.

A solid read, lots of fun, and like the orcs themselves with unexpected depths.

Goodreads

r/fantasy bingo: Featuring a Ghost, Self-Published Novel H, A Book that Made You Laugh,