Strong Heart is a sword-and-sorcery story that details the exploits of Joana, a desert mercenary and "Dagha pavadkar" – or ‘pure warrior’ – who is hired to look after a merchant’s family while he is away. The job is complicated by the cousin of the merchant’s wife, Tobias, a soft-hearted magician who may have managed to accidentally piss off half the town.

The story is a slow build—over ten installments so far and little more than a grab-and-shake by way of action—but the world is lively and the characters are distinct. Joana reminds me of Jordan’s Conan—shrewd and capable, possessing as much cunning as battle prowess. She moves through the narrative with a fierce, no-nonsense attitude toward everything; she has goals and she does what is necessary to meet them.

The only thing that holds this story back is proper editing; Joana grins in nearly every paragraph (to the point where it gets very annoying), there are a dozen or so replacements for the word ‘said’, etcetera—none of it is enough to render the narrative impenetrable, but it’s distracting enough to shave off half a star.

Otherwise, this is as straightforward as sword-and-sorcery gets—watching a competent character move through an interesting world, employing violence and cunning to arrive at their various ends. In this sense, the story succeeds very well, and anyone who enjoys classic sword-and-sorcery is likely to get quite a lot out of the tale. Solid meat-and-potatoes stuff, with the only significant flaw being a lack of adequate proofreading.

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