Why You'll Love This
Two mercenaries trying to escape a war somehow end up deeper in one — and their odds keep getting worse.
- Great if you want: gritty fantasy with morally pragmatic antiheroes just trying to survive
- The experience: fast and scrappy — swamp intrigue to city shadows without pause
- The writing: Werner keeps the world-building lean and the danger immediate
- Skip if: you're unfamiliar with the Iron Kingdoms setting — context helps a lot
About This Book
Two hard-luck mercenaries, a closing border, and an assignment neither of them asked for — Moving Targets drops readers into the gritty, war-scarred world of the Iron Kingdoms at exactly the right moment of desperation. Taryn Di La Rovissi and Rutger Shaw aren't heroes looking for glory; they're survivors trying to outrun a collapsing war before it swallows them whole. That distinction matters, because it grounds every dangerous choice they make in something urgent and believable — self-preservation dressed up in high stakes.
C.L. Werner writes lean, propulsive fiction, and this opening volume in the Exiles in Arms series reflects that instinct at every turn. The pacing rarely lets up, but Werner finds room for texture — the rot of Bloodsmeath Marsh, the crooked energy of Five Fingers — that makes the Iron Kingdoms feel genuinely inhabited rather than merely decorated. What sets this book apart is its focus on characters who operate in the margins of larger conflicts, giving the epic-scale warfare of the setting an intimate, street-level weight that traditional fantasy adventures often skip entirely.
