Review of Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson

Gardens of the Moon, first book in the Malazan series, was centered around Darujhistan. A city featuring an Arabian vibe, its streets glowed with blue ether fire, politicians built cabals behind wooden doors, and assassins had secret wars on dusty rooftops. But the series never returned to the setting. Until now. Toll the Hounds (2008), eighth book in the series, goes back to the exotic city to see how things have fared since a Jaghut tyrant nearly razed it to the ground.

In Darujhistan, several retired Bridgeburners have found a new home. But when assassination attempts start targeting them, they can't relax, and begin fighting back. Separated from Icarium, Mappo has heard rumors his old friend has tried to kill the unkillable Tiste Edur ruler in Letheras, and sets out on the long journey with the help of the Trygalle Trade Guild. Since defeating the Seerdommin in Memories of Ice, Anomander Rake has destroyed his massive, airborne island and taken up residence in the city of Black Coral. But the cult of the Seerdommin remains, and a new secret hand has been found trying to manipulate it. And in perhaps the most interesting setting of all, Anomander Rake's sword Dragnipur, the great wagon being hauled by the souls the sword has slain begins to slow. Losing power, the god Draconus tries to prevent the realm from losing all its power.

Review of Grendel by John Gardner

As a teen, I would amuse myself with the classic thought experiment of observing life on Earth through the eyes of fictional aliens. Undoubtedly this lead to my agnostic “beliefs”, but it likewise lead to a lifelong appreciation of viewpoints which examine life from abstract angles. Perhaps this is the attraction to John Gardner's Beowulf-inspired Grendel (1971).

Grendel is Beowulf through the eyes of the eponymous monster. It tells the tale in first-person, tracking the hairy beast's observations, feedings, and musings on the villages and tribes he terrorizes. His encounters with dragons and priests likewise come under the story's lens, all before the monster meets his known fate.

But the script is flipped in more ways than one. Rather than a paean to heroism, Grendel is an evisceration of human behavior, mundane to ethereal. Gardner takes the piss out of our social hierarchies, religions, and methods for blowing off steam—aka sex, murder, drunkenness, etc. It's an expose—a yin to Beowulf's yang, that not all is glory and honor and legacy.

Review of The End & the Death: Volume II by Dan Abnett

Volume I of Dan Abnett's The End & the Death was largely about setting tone and yes, getting the two Bigs off their idle asses. It was the quiet before the culmination of Horus' grand storm. In Volume II, drops start falling and lightning begins to flicker.

Indeed, in Volume II the pace picks up, tension ratchets up (somehow), and worlds begin to twist. Certain characters find themselves far out of their element as Chaos blurs the line between reality and dreams. The narrative rotates through a large fistful of characters—Malcador, Loken, Sigismund, Sanguinius, Horus, Horus, Ull, John, Vulkan, and several others. The dark king emerges from the shadows, but does he go further? The Dark King, a personage who has flitted through the shadows, finally reveals itself. And the BIG Chaos evil (finally) shows his (its?) face in theatrical fashion. Abnett seeming to relish these scenes, the Hansel & Gretel breadcrumbs that have been dropped throughout the series finally amount to a path.

Review of Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay

Guy Gavriel Kay has become, like many aging writers, a one note tune. He has been churning out the same cut/paste novels for the past decade. This is fortunate and unfortunate. As the market has made clear, there is a large swathe of readers who want dependable product. But there are also readers who look to storytelling to be an art, an idea that inherently requires innovation, evolution, and experimentation. Does Kay's latest, Written on the Dark (2025), buck his own trend?

Written on the Dark is the fictional biography of one Thierry Villar, a tavern poet. More episodic than overarching, the book picks and chooses the events of the poet's life relevant to how it shapes his fate. Skipping Villar's childhood, the book opens in his youth in the alleys and waterholes of the city of Orange (a clear medieval French analog). Villar is a talent recognized by the city's aristocracy, but he reserves his most subtle barbs for critiquing their feudal rule. That is, until broader events in the city drag him into court politics.

Console Corner: Review of Citizen Sleeper

In case you missed it, 100% it bears repeating. We are living in a golden age of culture. Each media form is producing so much content it's impossible for one person to consume everything in their area of interest. And so many pockets, niches, and layers have evolved within each. The layer of video gaming which has most strongly evolved the past 5-10 years is indie games, i.e. technology has simplified to the point producers and directors can drum up enough cash for a few people to design and program legitimate gaming experiences. They cannot compete with the big AAA developers for size and scope, but at the same time their bite-sized offerings are precisely what many players are looking for. Maybe Citizen Sleeper (2022), a story-based rpg, is for players like you?

Citizen Sleeper might be called cozy cyberpunk. But there are enough hard decisions that the word 'cozy' only partially applies. Players take on the role of a 'sleeper': an android body occupied by a transferred human sentience. At the beginning of the game, you arrive on a lonely space station. Having escaped corporate overlords, you're looking for a new life. And so you start picking up odd jobs to earn credits. Your body also needs food and maintenance, and getting these quickly takes you into the underbelly of the station. It's there you discover the anarchists, the engineers, the yakuza, the nurses, the optimists, and everybody else making the station a colorful sphere of humanity. Whether or not it will become your permanent home is up to you to discover and choose.

Review of The Will of the Many by James Islington

Here we go again, into the ocean of contemporary mainstream fantasy where finding a piece of solid ground isn't easy. Most novels seem content sticking to float away. Does James Islington's The Will of the Many (2023) offer a foothold?

The Will of the Many is a few story types rolled into one. It is a revenge story; An orphaned teen attempts to punish the unjust execution of his regal parents. A deeply held secret those around him do not know about, he bides his time. It is also a mystery; Shady things are happening at the highest levels of Senate, and our orphan seems to continually find himself in the right place at the wrong time—or perhaps right time—to learn more. And he may just become part of the mystery. And perhaps most predominantly, it is a boarding school drama; The orphan attempts to navigate the waters of teen drama in a school for potential magic wielders. Cue the emo.

Review of The End & the Death: Volume 1 by Dan Abnett

We've done it. 60+ books. Dozens upon dozens of short stories and novellas. Hundreds of characters. Uncountable battles in space and on land. Three sides have defined their stake in the game—Loyalists, Traitors, and Chaos. And now we've reached the end—at least Volume 1 of the end. And the death (sorry). Everything comes together in the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra with The End & the Death (2023) by Dan Abnett. This is the review of the first of its three volumes.

The End & the Death opens on a classic Warhammer scene—perhaps the quintessential Warhammer scene: a battlefield in ruins. A breeze tugs at abandoned banners. Space marines lie in awkward repose. Debris and wreckage scatter smoking ruins. Sightless eyes... With this imagery Abnett signals that the Siege of Terra is moving to a new phase, the end phase. No longer are Traitor forces endlessly assaulting the Palace's walls. The Loyalists have locked themselves inside and now need to be pried out. The End & the Death is the can opener.

Review of Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway

2024's Titanium Noir was a bit of a left field move for Nick Harkaway. But only a bit. Looking at the context, he was writing another book at the same in the George Smiley series (Karla's Choice). It made sense to test out the noir mode, or at least something similar, in a trial novel—which Titanium Noir was. This year's sequel, Sleeper Beach, however, was a complete surprise. Titanium Noir by no way ended on a wait-and-see vibe. It was self-contained, a specimen unto itself. How could Sleeper Beach continue the story?

Sleeper Beach moves forward with Cal Sounder, main character of Titanium Noir. Now a first-dose, baby-faced titan, he remains a private investigator, however, and in the opening pages is called to a Florida resort town to examine a body that has washed up on the town's washed up beach scene. The family who owns the town, the Erskines, have hired him to find out who and why. Communist plots, gangsters, and fertilizer bombs coming out of the woodwork, Sounder must navigate a load of danger as well as the load of his new, massive size to get to the bottom of the murder.

Review of Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson

Thanks to The Bonehunters, the pieces on Steven Erikson's MASSIVE chess board have been rearranged mid-series. In the aftermath of the Letherii-Tiste Edur war, all arrows now point toward the continent of Letheras. It's time to discover their targets (cannot be singular in this huge series) in Reaper's Gale (2007).

Reaper's Gale, as with all Malazan books thus far, features not one but several main storylines, as well as several minor. One at the forefront is that of Silchas Ruin and his quest to find and destroy Scalbandari's soul. Alongside him are Fear Sengar, Udinaas, Seren Pac, and Kettle. In Letheris city, the immortal emperor Rhulad battles his inner demons while continuing to take on any and all challengers. Karsa Orlong, a mysterious Seguleh, and Icarium wait in line. On the shores of the continent, a new threat to the Letheri/Edur empire arrives in a wave of boats, while the eastern part of the continent opens up to reveal age-old feuds coming to a boil as a warleader from a tribe called the Awl brings a powerful duo of warriors with him to attack and defeat the Letherii.

Review of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

Robert Jackson Bennett strikes me as a compulsive writer, a writer driven to sit down and write, regardless the output. The quality of the output can therefore be hit or miss. At one book per year and on to the next, it's easy to be mediocre or poor, true inspiration only occasional. 2024's The Tainted Cup was therefore a surprise. Considered, embedded, developed—it bore the signs of a story a long time brewing, not something a compulsive writer typically produces. That the sequel arrived in 2025, A Drop of Corruption, was not a surprise, but I definitely had worries it would not be as inspired as its predecessor.

My worries were misplaced. A Drop of Corruption equals, and may even top, The Tainted Cup. Bennett is starting to show himself a master of fantasy mystery. And it's a difficult genre to pull off. Where mimetic mysteries have real world constraints to invisibly guide the reading experience, the author of fantasy mystery must do double work. They need to string along a good mystery, but they also need to ground it in a world that doesn't exist. There are fewer invisible guardrails to guide the reader. A locked room can be entered by a wizard, for example. But they still need to ensure their readers' hunches hit somewhere near the mark. It's this fine tuning of 'what is possible in my fantasy world' where Bennett excels.