Reviewer Naomi Wineman wrote: " "Wrath of the Lion" is noteworthy for the fact of virtually all its cast of male characters (heroes and villains alike, and it is not always easy to determine which is which) being professional soldiers, very deeply scarred, traumatized and embittered by the wars of the middle 20th Century (Second World War, Korean War, the French wars in Indo-China and Algeria, the British Malayan Emergency). The memories both of the horrors which they endured as prisoners of very inhumane captors and the horrors which they themselves inflicted as utterly ruthless and determined fighters come up again and again, and substantially affect the plot in the book's present.