Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Justice of Kings | 2022 | Richard Swan | Buy |
| 2 | The Tyranny of Faith | 2023 | Richard Swan | Buy |
| 3 | The Trials of Empire | 2024 | Richard Swan | Buy |
| 4 | The Scour | 2025 | Richard Swan | Buy |
Empire of the Wolf became a Sunday Times bestseller on the publication of The Justice of Kings in 2022 and was translated into seven languages, establishing Richard Swan as one of the more significant new voices in grimdark fantasy. The series is set in a Roman-influenced empire where Vonvalt operates as a judicial officer — part judge, part investigator, part enforcer — in a world where the institutions of law are beginning to fail under the pressure of religious zealotry and political fracture.
Helena Sedanka’s narration gives the series its particular texture. She is Vonvalt’s clerk and companion, younger and more uncertain than him, and watching the empire’s collapse through her eyes is a different experience than it would be through his. The antagonism of Bartholomew Claver — a religious zealot with demonic power — and the broader conspiracy behind the empire’s crisis give the trilogy its escalating stakes.
The Scour (2025) steps back fifteen years to show Vonvalt earlier in his career, investigating a death in Gdansburg, a haunted port town on the edge of collapse. It works as a standalone prequel and as additional context for the trilogy’s version of him. The Great Silence, Swan’s sequel series set two centuries later, follows from the world the original trilogy establishes.