When I was deployed to Afghanistan many years ago, we would routinely receive care packages from businesses, churches, and charity organizations, packages containing myriad items. New socks, snack, and sometimes even books. As a voracious reader since childhood, I always appreciated the assortment of books. I had my Barnes & Noble Nook loaded with some of my favorites, but sometimes I wanted to read something new.

One book I’d picked up was a fantasy story, the first of a planned trilogy, written by some Russian author. I remember enjoying it and planning to get the rest of the books in the series when I returned to America. However, the months passed, the book series faded from memory, and by the time I remembered there was a book I’d really enjoyed, I could no longer remember the name of it or even the name of the author. Even Google searches of Russian fantasy authors were mostly unhelpful. The only thing I remembered for sure was that the protagonist was some kind of rogue, and that in this world the dwarves were all beardless, a significant departure from standard fantasy fare.

Finally, 10 years later I found it! Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov. I got the book for Christmas and dived right in, hoping that it would be as good as I remembered. Much to my delight, it was.

The plot is pretty typical for the genre. A nefarious, ancient evil referred to only as ‘The Nameless One’ is brooding far away, biding its time until it can unleash its full power on the kingdoms of men and elves who defeated him once before. In his service are vast hordes of orcs, corrupted men, and wicked shamans. The only thing keeping him locked away behind mountains of ice and snow is the Rainbow Horn, the most powerful magical artifact in the all the world, created long ago by the greatest shamans of the ogres.

The problem? It’s weakening, and that’s where the protagonist, master thief Shadow Harold comes in.

The pacing of the story is interesting. While the world of men is in mortal danger, the protagonists aren’t exactly rushing into action. They do have time to complete their mission of retrieving the Rainbow Horn, but they’ll only get one shot at it so they need to be prepared. And before Harold can even depart on this quest, he has a shadowy demon dogging him, and he has to deal with that. There’s also a mysterious magician known only as The Master, who is either working for The Nameless One or against the men and elves. Either way, he’s bad news.

As for the world itself, it’s a very unique world for a fantasy story. As aforementioned, the dwarves here are beardless and are proud of it. The reason being their ancient and hated rivals, the gnomes, grow beards. Goblins are present in the story too but are not bad guys. In fact, they are a formerly oppressed race, nearly driven to extinction by men and elves who believed them to be no different than orcs when in fact they tend to be good and fair.

Speaking of elves, they are fascinating in this world. Instead of the wise, restrained, angel-adjacent type of elves normally seen in fantasy, elves in Shadow Prowler are a bit terrifying. Their eyes shimmer with gold, they have razor-sharp fangs, and they are famous for bad tempers. A passing insult from a non-elf can expect to be returned in the form of an elven blade pressed against one’s throat.

So while the plot is pretty typical, the world itself feels different, which is good as far as I’m concerned.

One negative that I’ll bring up is sometimes the writing feels a little choppy. It’s told in first-person present, through the eyes of Shadow Harold, and sometimes the dialogue or his inner thoughts don’t seem to flow very well. However, I’m inclined to believe this is the result of a book being translated from Russian to English. I’m sure there are Russian phrases or sentence constructions that are perfectly good in their own language that just don’t hit the same when translated to English.

I highly recommend this one to any and all fans of fantasy. I’ll be ordering the rest of the books in this series soon and can’t wait to see where the story goes next.