The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso

Listen to our audio interview with K.S. Villoso about The Wolf of Oren-Yaro!

With so many incredible books releasing every month, I rarely take the time to return to stories I’ve already read. And yet, over two years after reading the self-published edition of The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, I couldn’t resist returning to Queen Talyien’s epic struggle to reunite her country and family.

This new version is better in nearly every way. Villoso has honed this story to a keen edge, adding extra space for the characters to develop, providing additional context for Talyien’s motivation, and generally giving readers more of everything that made the story great to begin with.

I love how committed Talyien is to her country, family, and the idea of maintaining respect through fear. She could easily grow into an authoritarian ruler like her father, but she’s still a bit idealistic and naïve, which makes for an interesting contrast I don’t often see. Talyien’s still a classic fantasy hero trying to do the right thing, but she’s thrust into a setting that I’d more often expect to see in a grimdark story.

And then there’s Khine, who splits readers neatly into two groups: those who love him, and those who are wrong. I’m always excited to see competent con artists and thieves in fantasy, and we first meet Khine when Talyien stumbles into him running a variation of the Fiddle Game con. Admittedly, that’s about the extent of actual conning we see from Khine. His thievery is vastly dwarfed by his charisma, which is what makes him such a lovable character to begin with.

I’d say something about Rayyel—Talyien’s runaway husband and almost co-ruler of Jin Sayeng—but the story benefits from his mysterious absence and so will this review.

The plot is so tightly focused and restricted to Talyien’s point of view that we only realize this is, in fact, Epic Fantasy near the end of the book. I’ve read very few stories with such a focus on international politics that still feel like a sword and sorcery adventure with personal stakes.

Other than stellar characters, Villoso’s greatest accomplishment in her Agos-Agan books is the world itself. There’s so much to love in just this one book, with hints of more to come. Dragons! Magical airships! Feuding warlords, power hungry empires, and alliances that shift so fast you should wear a seatbelt to avoid the whiplash. And that’s not even accounting for the other series and standalones set in this same world, starring minor characters from other nations and earlier timelines.

Overall, K.S. Villoso has packed an incredible amount of information into a sleek and streamlined story. The Wolf of Oren-Yaro is under 500 pages and delivers as much worldbuilding and character growth as many tomes twice that size. And yet, I was actually surprised to see it was that long; it read quickly and was almost over too soon.