Book Review: Bohun - The Complete Savage Adventures by Steve Dilks
This is the first part of my ongoing, story by story review of Bohun: The Complete Savage Adventures by Steve Dilks.
BOHUN:THE COMPLETE SAVAGE ADVENTURES
By SteveDilks
CarnelianPress, 2024. 219 pages
Coverartwork Adam Benet Shaw
Interiorartwork Kurt Brugel
Available as a paperback or kindle eBook
The openingstory, The Festival of the Bull, is an action-packed, violent and intricatelywoven tale of treachery, deceit and peril. It’s also an origin story, thoughthese details are subtly inserted into the narrative without holding up the action.
Forthose unfamiliar with Bohun he is a huge black warrior from the ill-fated kingdomof Damzullah. The last surviving warrior from its betrayed army, his solemission now is to find and rescue his beloved wife Dana who was sold intoslavery.
Havingjust escaped from the galley into which he had been imprisoned as an oarsman, wefirst meet Bohun soon after he has swum ashore and scaled the fortified wallsof the coastal city of Tharnya where a squad of the city guard attempt tocapture him. Minutes later, after a desperate fight which introduces us to hisfighting skills, Bohun flees into the city’s labyrinthine streets, where he stumblesacross a woman being attacked by a desperate gang of cutthroats who havealready killed her bodyguards. Thus it is that Bohun finds himself plunged unwittinglyinto an insidiously dark world of deceit, treachery and deadly perils.
Thiswas one of the first stories submitted to me as editor of Swords &Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 1 in 2020, and I would have acceptedit there and then except, for all its action-packed pages, it didn’t involveany sorcery or magic, which was something of an important requirement for thekind of anthology I was putting together. Fortunately Steve was quickly able torectify this when he submitted the next story in this volume, the superblyeerie The Horror from the Stars, which became the first Bohun story everto be published. (The Festival of the Bull went on to appear in SavageRealms Monthly in January the next year.)
