“Strong Heart” is a sword & sorcery fantasy about Joana (Jo to anyone who hasn’t pissed her off lately). Jo is female, but her tribe made her officially a man so she could train as a warrior. Now she’s a mercenary guard, and thanks to a job with a magician, life is about to get even more interesting than figuring out how to piss standing up without the right plumbing.
As the blurb says Strong Heart by capriox bovidae is very much in the sword and sorcery genre. At eleven installments it’s still early days but it’s shaping up to be a well written and engaging story so far.
There’s obviously been some careful worldbuilding. The magic system is well thought out and the details of the setting are positively palpable, and the two main characters, Joana and Tobias, come to life and leap off the page. Even better it manages all this without excessive infodumping.
Perhaps the only problem with the story is the plot is a little slow moving. It feels like things are about to start moving, but even sand info-dumping much of what is up so far feels like setup.
One other big problem is that it’s currently hosted on Livejournal which is not the idea platform for web fiction. This makes navigation less than ideal. Fortunately there is a post which acts as an index and every chapter has a link to the previous and next chapters. According to the landing page Capriox is looking to move to a better site soon, but for now it’s something to be aware of.
Verdict: Fans of the sword and sorcery sub-genre of traditional fantasy would do well to give Strong Heart a chance. It’s really shaping up to be a good one.
4 stars. 
