To be honest I requested this as I am always intrigued with books that have a character with some form of my name in it and Red Sonja is the classic. Overall I found the book was paced well and explored the barbaric world in which Sonja exists to a tee. The story begins with Sonja legging it from her lover Queen Ysidra from who she has stolen a mystical golden asp torc. The hunt is on and Sonja manages to elude her pursuers but sadly finds other trouble along the way from which she has to extract herself. Sonja may be a mercenary of sorts but she is not just about the sword swinging, she is intelligent and curious, yet this is what often gets her into trouble.
On the whole I enjoyed this romp through Sonja's world which was all new to me, other reviewers who have read the source material may have other views.
My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for access to this ARC, all views are my own.

It's been a bit of a year for Red Sonja. She's just had a movie not really limp out to cinemas, which does a decent job of updating her for the new millennium. Her comics appear to be in rude health, with all sorts of odd crossovers proliferating (Red Sonja vs Mars Attacks). And now this novel from Gail Simone, who did a solid job at updating those comics and putting amply visible flesh on the bones of a character barely defined in Robert E. Howard's originals, and pulped out by Roy Thomas in Marvel comics.

Sonja is at her heart a travelling mercenary, a stranger who rolls into town, upending the status quo and troubleshooting, then leaving at the end (think The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk ir even Doctor Who). Great for episodic pulp, but she has little in the way of wants and desires, she drinks, she fights, she beds someone - and this stinky chaos agent is very much the Sonja Simone wrote in comics. Here she tries to give her a little bit of character development, but mainly relies on her supporting characters to do the developing here. And if there is a bit of a problem here, it is that the supporting characters take up a bit too much space. I understand why, but it does feel like much of the plot resolution falls on these others. Those characters are original and not rigidly set by rights holders, so Simone can do what she likes with them.

This is Simone's first novel, and she has a bold narrative style aping the original pulp. There's occasionally a little too much foreshadowing, but it is a lot of fun to read. It's also interesting how she slips in her version of the origin story, and some of the similarities it has to the film (she was a supervising producer on the movie and wrote the story of a previous iteration). I'm not sure it enlightens us much more to Sonja's motivations, but then that's the problem with licensed characters, but it certainly feels like a solid addition to her legend.

I love Sonja. She is a deeply flawed character, shaped and formed by a ruthless way of living.
In the wars between countries and tribes, she fights everything and everyone, unable to form human connections, until maybe the very end.
I enjoy books that have little excerpts at the beginning of chapters.
Also, this was a breeze to read, had a nice pace, a satisfying ending and I loved the magic system. The world was also very rich and well built.
My only gripe is the absolute menace misogynistic bandit. I dont understand what his deal is, and why exactly he had to be part of the story. He just seemed to be going through a massive psychotic break.