A furious political horror novel that makes you understand the hate, then hate yourself.

Some horror novels want to frighten you. Lionhearts by Dan Howarth wants to indict you, and it does the job with a fury that leaves marks. This is political horror fiction of the angriest sort, following Henry Oswald through a run of losses so relentless that his slide towards a poisonous ideology starts to look almost reasonable, which is exactly the trap Howarth sets. Readers who found a rural strangeness in Last Night of Freedom will recognise the same knack for place here, only turned towards urban grit and a Northern setting Howarth builds as somewhere plainly let down.

The staccato prose keeps you locked inside a mind you would rather not visit. But the discomfort is the point. Howarth writes a radicalization horror novel through a lens any reader of Dostoevsky or Cormac McCarthy will savor, then dares you to look away from the strident, enraged attitudes that populate groups like Reform UK. Our Lionhearts book review digs into the character work, the setting, that blistering ending, and the reason this Dan Howarth horror novel earns every ounce of misery it puts you through.

Lionhearts by Dan Howarth | Review by Ben Unsworth| Northern Republic | ‎ 21 Nov. 2025 |

“Horror isn’t political!” yells someone somewhere.

“Fuck you!” yells Dan Howarth, sending a copy of this book into orbit until it turns into a heat-seeking missile headed straight for the brain of whoever made that comment. Because good God this is political. It’s angry, it’s nasty, it’s got an axe to grind, it’s a struggle to read more than a chapter in one sitting, and frankly it’s heart-breaking. Is it any wonder that Daniel Church did one of the blurbs?

We follow the life of Henry Oswald, who it’s fair to say is having a really rough time of things. First his daughter is killed in an explosion; then he’s divorced; then the horrors keep coming, from a nasty boss to a cruel landlord and ultimately eviction. It’s understandable that his perspective on his is a sour and bile-filled one, and so when a local community initiative offer to help him back on his feet he of course agrees. But by this point, he’s on a dangerous path and we watch as his anger only digs him a deeper hole, all with a lens that any fan of a Cormac McCarthy or Fyodor Dostoevsky will savour. 

Setting is really acute here, just as it was in Howarth’s ‘Last Night of Freedom’. Precise descriptions are never given, but there’s an urban grit to Howarth’s Northern climes in the same way his debut novel had a rural alienness. He constructs a place let down, and if this were ever filmed you can imagine ever episode tinted with a film noir’s lens, especially when the rather excellent bursts of action and intense character interactions begin to “hit the screen”.

It’s also why the ending works so well, as it’s suddenly turns into a florid and charged landscape as opposed to somewhere depressed; particularly when you realise how brutal it’ll eventually be, it’s a particular skill then that you’re somehow both happy and sad in those final, blistering hot moments.

As such, the exact nature of the plot is by and large irrelevant except for how it shows the various ways a poisonous ideology infects us. While it’s never non-linear, it almost taps into the cinema of Nicolas Winding Refn (in his more recent productions) and much of French experimentalism in demonstrating that the crucial element is not what’s seen or heard but the reaction; to that end, it does its job admirably, as if you’re not angry you’re sad, or vice versa.

The character work is strong too, even when it nears caricature. Henry Oswald is an incredibly fleshed-out character (although this occasionally comes at the expense of other characters) and the staccato prose lets you in on his mindset at once. But the wider picture is the scariest thing overall. It isn’t merely that you see in these characters the strident, enraged attitudes that so populate the likes of Reform UK – it’s that for a few small moments even the leftiest-minded of us may even understand their ideology (even if we then compel it to leave in our best Max Von Sydow voice). It’s an exercise in guilt through which Howarth guides us like a male Erinys.

Why get this then, considering it’s so damn depressing? The glib answer is because it’s important we open our eyes to this stuff. But of course there’s a lot to take in even for those who “don’t want politics shoved down their throat”; a story is only as good as the bedrock underpinning it, and in this case it’s bedrock you love to hate, a dark exploration of toxicity and hate that’ll leave every horror fan clamouring for more while begging for an aspirin and maybe even a lie-down in a darkened room.

Lionhearts: Northern Ashes by Dan Howarth

This Is England meets Taxi Driver in this violent, propulsive novel written for these dark times.

When Henry Oswald loses everything in a gas explosion in his hometown, he stumbles from disaster to disaster before being picked up by a local community group full of good intentions. Yet beneath their veneer of benevolence lies hatred and division. Half-in and half-out of the group, Henry must make a choice between redemption and darkness, knowing that violence will come with either…

Lionhearts is a violent trip into the backwaters of Northern England, exploring the rage and isolation of the population and delivering a timely message for this broken country of ours.

Sneering, contemptuous, and visceral; Lionhearts is a searing indictment of the real England. Howarth brings us a modern day Taxi Driver with a nasty and hateful main character who is completely twisted by grief.When you’re lost and you hold out your hand, be careful who takes you in.

Adam Hulse. Author of Below Economic Thresholds.

An unnerving and worryingly timely gut punch of a novel.

Andrew David Barker. Author of Dead Leaves and The Electric.

Lionhearts is a searing state-of-the-nation novel that feels dangerously relevant in today’s polarised society. With characters you care about, this is a gritty, realistic story about the slippery road to radicalisation. This Is England meets The Red Riding Quartet.

Wayne Kelly. Author of Safe Hands and The Call Back.

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