Violence is never the answer.
It is the question. And the answer is YES!
And the man to provide that answer is SLEDGE!
Back in October of 2023, an indie book dropped that did something a lot of indie books do not manage to do: cultivate a sense of aura around it. From the first glance at the book cover, you get the feeling of a gritty and brutal scenario happening. Author Nick Horvath sells Sledge online not just as another character, but a presence that hovers around the book and it went a long way into making Sledge feel like a legend in the making.
A Sledgend, as he likes to call fans of the book.
And Sledge does indeed have fans, having separated itself from a lot of the indie books by having a personality attached to it that runs down to the depths of the ink on the page. The cover is your first introduction, and I cannot praise the cover for its visual storytelling. At a glance, you assume the most immediate answer: Is this a book about a guy who hits people with a sledgehammer?
Sledge delivers exactly what it promises: old-school, unapologetic ultra-violence. Like an 80s R-rated beat-em up flick or a 90s video game before the industry had its balls removed by devs with no balls or had their balls removed.
The titular character is actually Einarr Laukkanen, a former basketball player who stands at 6’11 and lives in the deep cold of Minnesota. The book hits the ground running, and Sledge finds his ex-girlfriend at his doorstep with dire news: someone is trying to kill her, and she turns to him to help protect her. Fortunately, Sledge is willing and able and sets off to uncover the mystery. After some detective work that involves a lot of fists meeting a lot of faces, he finds himself having to contend with The Labyrinth, a roster of dark web assassins hellbent on taking Sledge out.
Thus the book unfolds with Sledge having to face each member of the Labyrinth for the amusement of a dark web audience that pays big money to watch deathmatches online. And now Sledge finds himself climbing their ranks like an arcade fighting game’s roster. But he’s not some normie. Not an everyday Joe off the street. No. He’s SLEDGE and Sledge knows how to hurt and be hurt. He’s tougher than a two-dollar steak, as Jim Ross used to say. And Sledge hits harder than a Mack truck at full speed.
Even though Sledge fights as if he’s got a cheat code enabled, he’s not immune to being hurt, he just can take a helluva beating. And boy does he. There are times in the book it comes close to straining credulity about the amount of physical trauma a human body can take. Working in the medical field myself, I have seen the human body survive grievous injuries and kept telling myself this as I read the book. Some of the violence he inflicts had me clenching my buttcheeks and wincing as I read it.
A bit of backstory does help flesh out why Sledge is such a walking tank. Despite being a basketball player, Sledge did a stint in a russian gulag where they pitted prisoners against each other in fight or die matches. And Sledge had to become who he is in order to overcome that ordeal. Very quickly you figure out that Sledge is driven by an almost feral energy when he fights. His hesitancy to use guns even makes sense given that in a firefight, he knows how big a target he is. The man is 70% center mass, he’s a sharpshooter’s dream target.
The mystery behind the Labyrinth keeps the characters going so that every chapter is not just one action set piece after another. Sledge and his friends manage to do a lot of sleuthing to try and tack down whoever is behind the Labyrinth before the Labyrinth’s top assassins come after him. Even then, its like watching the assassins look at John Wick and think “Yeah, I got this.”
No, you don’t. You ain’t got Sledge.
The book excels in its unapologetic action scenes that are dripping with bloody fun and imaginative set-pieces. Best of all, the book is unapologetic in its content. Language, violence, and dark material are presented without tiptoeing around feelings or content warnings. It’s a sharp contrast to media that’s had its corners shaved off.
If there’s criticism to be had, it would have to be the ending, which is a bit of an interesting twist I didn’t quite see coming, but feels a bit so-so compared to a lot of what came before. By no means a bad ending, just one I’m not sure works as well as the rest of the book does.
At (page numbers), the book is well paced, well written, and doesn’t wear out its welcome. It’s a fun skull-bashing time to be had and unlike almost any book I’d ever read up to this point. I highly recommend Sledge vs the Labyrinth and recommend you follow its author on Twitter. No one is a bigger fan of Sledge than he is.
And if you want to want, you can watch my original Sledge review here.
You can grab Sledge vs the Labyrinth HERE. Its sequel Sledge vs the Wendigo, is right around the corner, dropping in October 2026, and is available to pre-order now: Pre-order Sledge vs the Wendigo
John A. Douglas is an independently published author and the author of the Age of Adventures fantasy series, including its two starter books: The Black Crown and The Lionheart: Icon of Justice
