Sonja of Hyrkania is accustomed to being called mad by other people. It is madness for any woman to live as a warrior in the rough world of Hyboria. It is madness for her to throw herself into battle wearing scraps of chainmail that do little to protect her. And it is maddening to her many enemies – the few who still live – that Sonja lives as she does and has not yet had the decency to die.

Yet Sonja’s latest adventure has spurred Sonja to wonder if perhaps she truly is mad or if the madness of her current employers is catching. For it is, to Sonja’s mind, madness to take an oath of chastity and sobriety. It is madness to devote your life to protecting a tower full of books and scrolls – a library, they call it! And it is maddest of all to stay in that library, ready to die, in defiance of an empress who dislikes the idea of knowledge freely shared.

Said Empress has heard of Sonja’s defeating her first wave of guards and elected to send an elite trio of assassins known as The Vipers. Scoundrels of the highest order, they delight in the torture and suffering of women and they are quite eager – so their herald says – to test themselves against the legendary She-Devil With A Sword.  The night which follows shall test Sonja like nothing she has known before!

Last month, I gushed extensively  over the talent of Gail Simone and Walter Geovani and the glory of this book. I see no reason to repeat myself this month. If you have not yet had the pleasure of reading this series, you should rectify that immediately and pick up the trade-paperbacks of the first two volumes.

In the end, there is nothing more for me to say but this.

This is a worthy ending to an excellent saga and what Simone and Geovani have accomplished with this series is truly revolutionary. This shall be the definitive Red Sonja run for generations of comic readers. It is an epic worthy of The Nemedian Chronicles. And I lament that we shall not see its like again.