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7 Books About Badarse Assassins

Are your favorite protagonists prone to sneaking, stabbing, and killing folk for coin? Are you keen on cloaks, shadows, and artful murder-for-hire? If you answered yes to any of the above and you’re looking for your next great read, look no further! The list below contains seven great novels about a few of the fantasy genre’s most badarse assassins.

7. A Dance of Cloaks by David Dalglish

The Underworld rules the city of Veldaren. Thieves, smugglers, assassins…they fear only one man. Thren Felhorn is the greatest assassin of his time. All the thieves’ guilds of the city are under his unflinching control. If he has his way, death will soon spill out from the shadows and into the streets. Aaron is Thren’s son, trained to be heir to his father’s criminal empire. He’s cold, ruthless — everything an assassin should be. But when Aaron risks his life to protect a priest’s daughter from his own guild, he glimpses a world beyond poisons, daggers, and the iron rule of his father. Assassin or protector; every choice has its consequences.

Read A Dance of Cloaks (Shadowdance, Book 1).

6. The Book of Jhereg by Steven Brust

Vlad Taltos is a mobster and assassin in the magical metropolis of Adrilankha. A member of the Great House of Jhereg (named for the tiny dragon-like creatures native to Dragaera), Taltos is given the largest contract of his career but the job is even more complicated than he expects.

Read The Book of Jhereg (Vlad Taltos, Collection 1)

5. Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.

She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po. She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.

Read Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)

4. Age of Assassins by RJ Barker

Girton Club-foot has no family, a crippled leg, and is apprenticed to the best assassin in the land. He’s learning the art of taking lives, but his latest mission tasks him with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince’s murder. In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies, Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire kingdom.

Read Age of Assassins (The Wounded Kingdom, Book 1)

3. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king’s council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she’ll serve the kingdom for four years and then be granted her freedom. Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilarating. But she’s bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her … but it’s the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead … quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

Read Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, Book 1)

2. The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art—and he is the city’s most accomplished artist, his talents required from alleyway to courtly boudoir. For Azoth, survival is precarious, something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he’s grown up in the slums and learned to judge people quickly—and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint. But to be accepted, Azoth must turn his back on his old life and embrace a new identity and name. As Kylar Stern, he must learn to navigate the assassins’ world of dangerous politics and strange magics—and cultivate a flair for death.

Read The Way of Shadows (Night Angel Trilogy, Book 1)

1. Heroes Die by Matthew Stover

Renowned throughout the land of Ankhana as the Blade of Tyshalle, Caine has killed his share of monarchs and commoners, villains and heroes. He is relentless, unstoppable, simply the best there is at what he does. At home on Earth, Caine is Hari Michaelson, a superstar whose adventures in Ankhana command an audience of billions. Yet he is shackled by a rigid caste society, bound to ignore the grim fact that he kills men on a far-off world for the entertainment of his own planet – and bound to keep his rage in check. But now Michaelson has crossed the line. His estranged wife, Pallas Rill, has mysteriously disappeared in the slums of Ankhana. To save her, he must confront the greatest challenge of his life: a lethal game of cat and mouse with the most treacherous rulers of two worlds.

Read Heroes Die (Acts of Caine, Book 1)

While this list contains a few of the author’s favorites, the fantasy genre is blessed with a Dark Brotherhood’s worth of killers worth reading about. Notice one or more of your favorite cutthroats is missing? Check out Grimdark Magazine’s page on Facebook and Twitter and leave a comment on this article!

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REVIEW: Dune: The Duke of Caladan by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

As the classic novel Dune by Frank Herbert opens, we’re introduced to the noble family of House Atreides, as they’re moving operations from their homeworld of Caladan to a new holding, the desert planet Arrakis, also known as Dune. We can immediately see that this family will be the source of our upcoming story, with the young protagonist Paul Atreides taking center stage. While it’s easy to pull for Paul and his family from the outset, it would have been nice to get to know these people a little before their great journey began. Dune: The Duke of Caladan gives us that experience.

Set in the year leading up to the novel Dune, The Duke of Caladan centers on House Atreides before they embark on their voyage. Duke Leto and his concubine Lady Jessica have been together for some time, coping with the struggles that the Imperium forces on their relationship. We get a good illustration of that here, as Leto is pulled by duty and his noble station, the rules of his society making it impossible for him to marry his one true love. Jessica is similarly torn, knowing she has her Duke’s love but also the rules that come with it and to add to her problems is the Bene Gesserit sisterhood where she was trained in their art and comes to realize she is a pawn in their schemes. And their son Paul is growing close to marrying age, which will open a new set of frustrations for the next generation.

The Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV is showcasing his new Imperial Museum on the planet Otorio and has invited all the noble people of rank to attend his grand opening. During this event, an act of terrorism committed by the Noble Commonwealth sets events into motion across the galaxy. Soon the industries of commerce, politics, science, and religion are at odds as the dust settles.

In Dune: The Duke of Caladan, the story is not as important as the fact of its existence. That is, while the different threads carry the narrative along, the main benefit from this read is exploring the characters introduced in the great Dune novel. There, we are only given a small bit of background before the novel’s plot kicks in, so here it is useful to learn more about the key figures in its beginning. We get a feel for how the Atreides family interact, specifically how young Paul is being brought up to be the next Duke, and the complex relationship between Duke Leto and Lady Jessica.

We’re also given some insight into the relationships between other characters too, notably those of the Atreides household such as Gurney Halleck, Duncan Idaho, Thufir Hawat, and Wellington Yueh. The novel shifts to other familiar faces too, giving us a preview to the world of Dune itself and showing how the Baron Harkonnen operates, and finally to the schemes behind the scenes of the Emperor and his advisor Count Hasimir Fenring, and the Bene Gesserit sisterhood as represented by Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Emperor’s Truthsayer.

Though this novel is set just before the beginning of Dune, I’d recommend reading the original novel first. There are some details here that would be spoilers to new readers, as they were surprises revealed in the original telling. It’s also a bit more of a treat to a reader that’s revisiting the Dune universe, getting extra enjoyment out of learning more about characters that Frank Herbert didn’t have time to explore in the novel.

I did find that there were references to several events from earlier works by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson set in the Dune universe, but they were explained well enough to understand the current reading without losing much. A completist might want to read those first, but I didn’t find it necessary. Dune: The Duke of Caladan is the first of a trilogy set just before Dune, and is a great entry in the series, perfect to read just before tackling a reread of the main cycle.

Thanks to Caroline Penny at Tor Books for the eARC of this novel.

Read Dune: The Duke of Caladan by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

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REVIEW: Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

Thirteen Storeys is the debut novel of Jonathan Sims, head writer and voice actor for the horror podcast The Magnus Archives. Given the immense popularity of The Magnus Archives, it’s not much of a surprise that Thirteen Storeys works in a very similar vein of horror.

The Magnus Archives has excelled at taking short horror ideas and linking them together into a coherent metaplot without giving up on making almost every episode stand alone. Thirteen Storeys threads a similar needle. Each chapter is from the point of view of one person who either lives or works in Banyan Court, an apartment building owned by billionaire Tobias Fell.

Banyan Court has two sides to it, a wealthy side and a side put up shoddily, filled with poor workmanship, for the poor people, as legally a portion of the area had to be for low-income residents. The stories give a wide range of perspectives on it, from wealthy people who still aspire to be far wealthier to those struggling to make ends meet, and a few who simply work there.

The apartment building, though fairly new, had numerous accidents and deaths during its construction. Banyan Court lacks the long storied history of many haunted places, but that is intentional, on the part of both Sims and his enigmatic billionaire Fell.

There are small connections between the various stories. Several characters notice an elderly lady isn’t out much and someone else seems to be staying in her house, for instance. But overall, each story functions as its own thing.

Many of the tales in Thirteen Storeys are excellent. I particularly enjoyed the second story, about a man becoming overly obsessed with his new artwork. The young girl and her imaginary friend who is actually a ghost is a common trope, but one Sims executes extremely well due to focusing on the specificity of this girl and this spirit. Sleepless was another exceptional chapter, as it dealt with the horror of its protagonist realizing she couldn’t trust her own mind.

It also helps that Sims has a good knack for writing these people distinctly from each other. The prose for the young girl is not the same as the prose for the plumber, or the art collector.

The final chapter, the thirteenth story, finally binds the various tales together. It’s a wonderfully creepy climax, hitting that perfect spot of uncanny horror. The clash of supernatural horror meeting all too human frailty is where the genre excels, and the final chapter crackles with it. It is by far the longest part of Thirteen Storeys, as it shifts between all twelve of the previous protagonists and the point of view of billionaire Tobias Fell, as he finally hosts the dinner party he’s offered to each of these people.

Thirteen Storeys is an excellent horror anthology-masquerading-as-novel. The stories are varied enough that everyone will find something creepy in Banyan Court.

4/5

Read Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

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RETRO REVIEW: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines remains one of the great cult classics of video game history. It is a computer RPG that bombed so hard in its initial release that it destroyed its studio. Reception of the game was also terrible due to the fact that it was a glitchy unfinished mess and was released against the megahit Half Life 2. By all accounts, the game should have drifted off into obscurity and never been thought of again.

[image error]That isn’t what happened, though. Instead, Bloodlines picked up steam via word of mouth and benefited from one of the most active modding communities on the internet. The original developers, themselves, helped create a patch that fixed many of the issues the initial release suffered from. For two decades thereafter, the game was continually added to with more fixes as well as additional content. If you choose to play Bloodlines, you shouldn’t play the original game, but indulge in its amazing patches that make it one of the best roleplaying experiences of its era.

But does it hold up? Does it have anything to offer gamers in the 21st century? Especially when the sequel, Bloodlines 2, is coming out next year? Well, given Bloodlines 2 was delayed an entire year, I would say yes. I would also say yes because the game is still fantastic. There are many horror games out there but few with the style, fashion, darkness, and humor of this game. While based on the tabletop game, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines manages to exceed its parent in creating a lived-in world of darkness (pun intended).

The premise is you are a mortal embraced by a vampire during a night of rough sex. This is actually illegal by the laws of vampiredom and your sire is immediately put to death by the snobbish vampire prince, Sebastian La Croix, who would kill you as well if not for the intervention of vampire revolutionary, Nines Rodriguez. Released into the wilds with barely an awareness of what you are, you soon become wrapped up in the complicated politics of Los Angeles’ undead nightlife.

You can choose to be one of several clans ranging from the beautiful Toreador to the hideous Nosferatu to the utterly insane Malkavians. The game doesn’t inform you that the Nosferatu are forced to avoid nearly all social encounters in the game and are shot at by humans on sight. It also doesn’t inform you that the Malkavians perceive the world “differently” and most of their speech is gibberish. They should be considered the “advanced” course of Bloodlines and best played on a second or third run.

The characters are the primary appeal of Bloodlines with all of them exaggerated but still somewhat believable. You aren’t limited to making friends with just your fellow vampires but also a bizarre and eclectic collection of weirdos ranging from gun-runner Fat Larry to beautiful Goth nightclub owner Venus to willing vampire slave Heather. The vampires are the main stars, though, with La Croix and Nines just being the beginning of the undead beings you meet. My favorites are probably vampire stripper Venus, who never quite consummates the promises her flirtations offer, and Strauss the ancient Tremere warlock who seems to be the only classic vampire in the group.

There are some places that Bloodlines shows its age with the Chinese vampires, known as the Kuei-Jin, being just this side of being racist caricatures. The Chinatown district of the game is also not terribly well done, having everyone speak in broken English. Also, the game very much is meant to appeal to the male gaze with every woman in the game designed to appear hyper-sexualized. Admittedly, this was an appeal to me in my teenage years and it would be a poorer vampire game if there wasn’t copious amounts of thirst (pun intended). They just should have put something in for the ladies and men who prefer men.

The game allows you to play a variety of ways with your character being diplomatic, a wiseass, a cold-blooded psychopath, or some combination there. The primary mechanic of the game is deciding whether to side with the Camarlla, Anarchs, the renegade Prince, or the Kuei-Jin. These choices are something of a false dichotomy, though, because at least some of them are objectively stupid. You can be a “good” vampire who helps others or a monster who destroys lives in order to amuse themselves but most of the time you’re just trying to survive from night to night.

The combat in the game is, unfortunately, terrible. You can wield melee weapons or guns but the accuracy of the latter is ridiculously bad even if you up your firearms skill. Supplementing the combat are disciplines that are much more fun to use. Each Clan comes with three different disciplines and you can unleash them on the helpless humans or monsters you face. This is all fairly true to the tabletop game and the skill sheet for Bloodlines is a simplified version of its inspiration.

The game is great for roughly 2/3rds of its runtime before gradually going downhill. The areas of Santa Monica, Downtown, and Los Angeles are spectacular. Chinatown is a big step down with the aforementioned racism and a lot less content. Afterward, the game loses most of its social element and becomes a straight combat fest until the end. I regularly replay the first half of the game but can rarely bring myself to finish it.

The atmosphere is where the game excells and everything in the game contributes to it. The music is 90s era Goth rock and heavy metal that works well with the instrumentals. There’s clubs full of decadent patrons, dirty pawn shops, beautiful skyscrapers, dirty hovels, and even the occasional normal store. One of the best levels in the game is a haunted hotel based on the Shining and is legitimately terrifying even when you know all of its tricks.

In conclusion, Bloodlines is a flawed but awesome game that is primarily memorable for its incredible atmosphere. Los Angeles is a seedy, sexy, sinister, and supernatural-filled place that is perfect to prowl around as a monster. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about so much of the latter half of the game degenerating to bad combat. Still, if you want to be a creature of the night then few games simulate the experience better.

Play Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

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REVIEW: Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York

Vampire: The Masquerade: Coteries of New York is a video game set in the World of Darkness and developed by Polish company Draw Distance. More precisely, it is Visual Novel which consists of a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-esque text adventure. Your character is Embraced as a vampire one evening and have a limited amount of time to make a number of allies to help you against both the Second Inquisition as well as your fellow undead.

If you’ve played either those or Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines you have a basic idea of how the game world goes: there are vampires, they live among us, they have a complicated royal court, and there’s those vampires who rebel against them. The setting has been updated for the 5th Edition of the tabletop game with vampire hunters actively scouring the city for the undead (albeit under the cover of secrecy like their prey) and any slip ups potentially alerting them.

The game is moody and atmospheric with excellent writing. From the moment you begin the game, you are under the thumb of the Camarilla and they’re ready to kill you for the slightest infraction. In my first playthrough, I got myself killed in the first ten minutes because I played the stereotypical rowdy Anarch. I played much more cautiously afterward and it proved to an interesting experience that reminded me of my own Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop gaming sessions.

I didn’t know quite what to expect from the game but I got a solid three hour experience out of the game and immediately replayed it because I only got roughly half the content of the game before the “timer” ran out with events reaching their final conclusion. So, really, you need to play the game at least twice to experience all of the content as well as meet all of the game’s characters.

You have three choices of Clan in the game with a male Asian American Brujah, a female Ventrue businesswoman, and a black gay male Toreador. This is good diversity to choose from but some fans will be annoyed that there’s no opportunities to play Malkavians or Nosferatu. The lack of customization is a mild annoyance as I really liked the designs and dialogue is mostly the same between them (with the exception of one incredibly racist Anarch Baron).

There’s no voice acting in the game but an enjoyable soundtrack, ambient noise, and lots of well-drawn art pieces to add to the text. This was a game definitely made on a budget but it is a perfectly functional visual novel experience. The price was worth it at twenty US dollars but buyers expecting something remotely similar to Bloodlines will be disappointed. They’ll have to wait for the sequel coming out in 2020.

Gameplay-wise, 99% of the game consists of you talking to various characters and making decisions based on your actions. Do you trust this person? Do you act snarky or respectful? Do you kill someone or not? Sometimes you’ll get options to use your Disciplines and they aren’t always the ones your player character should possess.

One interesting game mechanic is your character needs to regularly hunt and feed or they will become a savage wild animal who can’t interact with other characters effectively. The hungrier you get, the more your screen fills with images of blood. Frenzying is represented by an amorphous black blob covering all of your vision. I thought that was very clever and was a far better use of the Beast and Hunger than Bloodlines.

The writing for the characters was very well done and I was especially fond of Hope, D’Angelo, and Sophie. Hope, in particular, is an internet streaming riot grrrl and Malkavian that is just my kind of Gothic Punk heroine. D’Angelo, despite looking too good for a Nosferatu, is a character that I love for being “Miami Vice Noir” in his attitude. Sophie is a typical Toreador elder with smiles and claws in equal measure. The supporting cast is all vividly realized and a lot of nods to the 2001 New York By Night supplement that I and a handful of other gamers remember.

I felt the plot was very well done with a complicated double, triple, and quadruple-cross-filled web of undead intrigue. I was disappointed that the game’s ending seems to be somewhat predestined to have one result but I still had a lot of fun. It really manages to capture the paranoia and lies that were central to the game. I would have appreciated more opportunities to work with the Anarchs but that’s a mild disappointment.

Honestly, my biggest complaint about the game is the fact that despite being a text based adventure, it is still pretty hard on the rails. The three character paths are more or less identical with only those you know from mortal life really mattering. I wouldn’t mind this if the fact that the endings don’t allow you to affect matters much either. I felt that, if anywhere, you should be able to affect events there. Gathering a coterie also felt like it would result in a bigger effect than it did, when it actually only impacts a tiny amount of the plot in the end. I would have also appreciated the ability to save at any point rather than having your saves vanish after you finish the game.

In conclusion, I recommend Coteries of New York with caveats. It is not going to be something that breaks the mold for horror gaming everywhere but it might lead to the creation of more of these set in the World of Darkness. It was short, sweet, and a familiar setting that I loved in the 90s (and love now). Keep your expectations within reason, though, as it’s more like being at a tabletop session than anything else. It is available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. Frankly, I feel this will be better played on a computer as there’s a lot of text to read and my consoles are far away.

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Top Five Slasher Video Games

Slasher horror is an underdeveloped area of video games. Part of it is due to the inherent power fantasy of the medium. Almost everyone chooses to play as an escape from life and being in control of a slasher victim is something that few players want to experience. Similarly, playing a slasher rarely has the level of joy that watching one of them work has. After all, most slashers are invincible stealthy super-killers hunting the much less capable band of teenagers that is their current play. To say the deck is stacked in favor of the slasher is understating things.

Still, there’s a few games that manage to capture the essence of the slasher experience without sacrificing the enjoyment factor. Here are some of my favorite slasher horror games and games that make the experience more entertaining for dealing with players set against invincible horror movie killers.

5. Resident Evil 2 (remake)

This is perhaps cheating because the Resident Evil games are puzzle action games and certainly not slasher horror, or are they? Resident Evil: Nemesis played with the themes of a slasher movie and became one of the most beloved games of its generation. Resident Evil 2’s remake takes the lesson of this game and makes the formidable Mister X. An invincible stalker, it seeks out the player character throughout the Raccoon City Police Department. The tension during early playthroughs is formidable and adds a whole new element to a classic formula. It’s also not entirely restricted to Mr. X as there are good moments of stalker horror with Chief Irons and the mutated William Birkin as well. None of them live up to Mr. X, however. X is gonna getcha, especially if you keep the difficulty ramped up.

Sadly, Mister X shows up his own inspiration with the Resident Evil: Nemesis remake having a significantly less scary version of its original monster.

Play Resident Evil 2 (remake)

4. Friday the Thirteenth: The Game

No, not the NES one, though I was tempted to homage that. As a long-time fan of Jason Voorhees, I was ecstatic about this game and almost sponsored it to get inside the game as a model. I missed my chance, though. The game was originally multiplayer-only but a single player campaign was added where Jason can reenact the events of Friday the Thirteenth I-IV with the game’s archetypal cast. The multiplayer is certainly fun, focused on players as campers escaping from Jason (also a player), but I love the single player mode more. It’s a simple and short series of a dozen scenarios but I loved all the homages as well as Hitman-like gameplay.

Play Friday the Thirteenth: The Game

3. Dead by Daylight

The most famous and popular slasher video game right now, Dead by Daylight is a flawed but entertaining multiplayer-only game. Honestly, I initially put this under Friday the Thirteenth: The Game. However, Dead by Daylight came first and has a much wider variety of killers present. Not only their own original creations but many licensed slashers. There’s Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Pyramid Head, and even Ghostface from Scream. It’s kind of funny that you can have these characters next to characters obviously based on them. My biggest complaint is that the story for the game is kind of silly with the slashers and their victims trapped in a sort of hell dimension where they repeat Groundhog Day-esqe loops.

Play Dead by Daylight

2. Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation remains one of my all-time favorite video games. After the excretable Aliens: Colonial Marines, this is a loving homage to the original movie and is a fantastic slasher game from beginning to end. Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, is out to find out what happened to her mother and finds herself on a haunted dialpidated station where something is stalking the few remaining survivors. The alien is terrifying and invincible against poor Amanda’s limited combat abilities. We need more games like this and it’s a shame it never got a sequel.

Play Alien: Isolation

1. Until Dawn

Until Dawn is easily the best slasher video game of all time with its only competition being Alien: Isolation above. It is a video game notable for being a pretty solid slasher movie by itself with an excellent cast, voice acting, motion capture, special effects, and lore. As you play half-a-dozen college kids, you can have the majority (or all of them) die horribly or work to save everyone. Hayden Panettiere is gorgeous and likable as lead Sam but I think Brett Dalton as well as Rami Malek are just as important to making it work. The gameplay is mostly quick time events and exploration but that’s not bad. It’s a shame its sequels and spiritual successors haven’t lived up to the hype.

Play Until Dawn

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REVIEW: Greedfall by Spiders Studios

Greedfall is a double-A roleplaying game by the French studio Spiders. It is designed in many ways similar to the Dragon Age games, on a smaller budget of course, and it mostly succeeds in filling those lofty shoes with a captivating story of colonization in a 17th century inspired fantasy world. You’re given choices, companions with various quests, and reputations to uphold or sink at your whim.

You start Greedfall in the city of Serene on the mainland, as your created character who is referred to by their last name regardless of sex; De Sardet. You learn the basics of fighting, you meet some of the important players, and you are subjected to more than a couple of instances of info-dumping from each faction. You get to know one of your companions, Kurt, and the predictably annoying manchild cousin you’ll be traveling with named Constantin. Yet, despite some cliched trappings, this tutorial area serves as a necessary precursor to the main event which is the island you will be traveling to; Teer Fradee.

Teer Fradee is the lush, forest-filled island of Greedfall with a very interesting native population. Teer Fradee is in the process of being colonized and a few cities have already been raised from each respective faction: The Merchant Congregation, The Bridge Alliance, and the Thélème Pilgrims. Your job is to be a legate to the factions and to provide diplomatic relations with the Islanders. Of course, things do not turn out as planned. Many of the factions are less than understanding of the shamanistic ways of the natives and use them as slaves, study then like specimens, or force them to convert to the ‘one true religion’.

In addition to being the diplomatic voice of reason (if you choose to be, of course) on the island, Greedfall also has you in search of a mysterious, plague-like disease that may have originated from the island. The Malichor, as it’s called, has spread to the mainland and is always terminal.

Greedfall is a bit repetitive in sections and is filled with instances of backtracking. Combat is simple but passable and the game has decent graphics, but certain models and textures look last-gen.

Despite its shortcomings, Greedfall is a very solid game that can suitably scratch the itch fantasy fans have until the next Dragon Age releases. It has a good story, some likable companions, and a rich world. It’s just a shame the technical aspects aren’t on par with the dark and well-written story.

Play Greedfall

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EXCLUSIVE: The Prologue of Legacy of Steel by Matthew Ward

Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward was hands down one of the best books of last year. When I saw the glorious cover for Legacy of Steel hit the interwebs and read up on the blurb, I knew–I just knew–that book two was going to be a barnstorming follow up. I am currently starting my read on it and can’t wait to share my review. If you haven’t yet started this series, then right now is a great time to go and pick up book one and to get started into this epic story (Kindle US / UK; Paperback US / UK; Audible US / UK).

For those of you already in the know, book two, Legacy of Steel released in the US on November 3rd and the UK on the 5th of November (Kindle US / UK; Paperback US / UK).

Orbit and Matt were kind enough to send over the prologue to show our fans, so without further ado, I give you the opening to what is going to be an absolutely brilliant read, Legacy of Steel.

Legacy of Steel by Matthew Ward
Six Months Ago
Lunandas, 28th Day of Frosthold

Of seven, six sprang from Dark of Old.

One drowned. One sleeps. One waits.

The fourth sets blood awry with gift of self.

The fifth bargains all to ruin.

The last yearns for treasure lost.

Gods do as they please, never knowing their roles are set.

But it is a poor story that changes not in the telling.

– excerpt from The Undawning Deep

The moon blazed in the field of stars and the royal city of Tregard reached up to embrace her. Filigree patterns laid into flagstone and wall glowed bright with whorl of root and branch, supplanting the blocky buildings of day with a silver forest whose limbs offered worship to regal Ashana.

A goddess who no longer spoke to Melanna Saranal as once she had.

Melanna released her grip on the balcony and strove for joy amidst melancholy. No room for sorrow this night. By dawn, everything for which she’d striven would be hers. No longer a mere princessa of the Silver Kingdom of Rhaled, but recognised heir to the imperial throne – the first woman acclaimed so.

But the cost…

Storeys below, crowds gathered beneath skeletal birch trees. Tregard had emptied for this moment. Despite the hour. Despite winter’s lingering cold. Thousands upon thousands of citizens gathered beneath Mooncourt Temple’s alabaster walls, standing vigil until the toll of twelfth bell proclaimed a worthy soul had claimed the imperial crown.

Gentle hands bound the last black tress of Melanna’s hair with jewelled chain.

“Ashanal. The hour is upon us.”

“Thank you, Sera.” Melanna gazed out across the shining city to Ravenscourt Temple’s brooding spires. The black stone lay ever in shadow, unyielding as the promise of death, and implacable as the embrace of Otherworld’s mists. “I wanted to see the city one last time. We’ll never be quite the same, it and I.”

“You will bring it only prosperity, Ashanal.”

Ashanal. The title that marked her as a daughter of goddess as well as Emperor. Fit for one who’d walked with Ashana since her earliest years. But no more. Not since Melanna had allowed a scion of Dark to escape her grasp. She longed to hear Ashana’s voice. She’d begged. But the silence in her prayers had stretched through the turning of leaves and the harsh bite of winter.

Melanna set her back on Tregard’s splendour. Always so hard to read Sera’s expression behind the silver half-mask that left all but her eyes and the olive skin of her jaw concealed. Melanna couldn’t even be certain of the handmaiden’s age. Sera’s ready vigour spoke to youth, perhaps as brief a tally as Melanna’s own nineteen winters. Indeed, in complexion and build they were twins. But the poise Melanna envied belonged to a greater span.

What would Sera say if she knew the truth? She was lunassera, handmaiden to the Goddess, driven to serve Melanna by faith more than friendship. But Sera remained inscrutable, and Melanna found, once again, that she couldn’t raise herself to the confession.

A bright peal rang out. The eighth bell of coronation ritual, welcoming dignitaries into the temple’s heart. The ninth would call Melanna to her father’s side. The eleventh would invite the Goddess to grant her blessing. It had gone unanswered for decades out of mind.

Sera stepped aside in a swish of close-fitting white robes and drew aside the balcony’s drape with graceful precision.

“Come, Ashanal. Even for royalty, punctuality is politeness.”

Melanna returned Sera’s smile, though she shared little of its warmth. She crossed the threshold, exchanging the crisp silver of the midnight sky for the glow of torchlight. Sera followed with soundless tread, pulling closed the drapes and the etched glass door.

Two mannequins waited between hearth and changing screen. Melanna traced fingertips across the golden scales of the nearest, the scars of battle long since repaired. The armour alone was challenge to tradition, but not so much as the sword belt laid alongside. Though they were otherwise equal to men in all things, women did not fight wars. They did not bear swords – not even a divine gift, as was the Goddess’ silvered blade – and because of that, could not rule. On the second mannequin, the threads of a golden gown shone like sunlight – as different from the black cotton dress she currently wore as night from day. Armour of a different sort, worn to draw attention to the wearer’s body, and thus guard her thoughts.

The warrior or the courtier. Wearing armour to her father’s coronation would be affront to tradition and the pride of jealous men. The dress was conciliatory – proof that the upstart Saranal had not completely forgotten her place.

Her father would prefer she don the dress. Soothe the feathers of a Golden Court ruffled by his wary acceptance of peace overtures from the Tressian Republic. The panelled gown was entirely beautiful, crafted from Ithna’jîm silk, and radiant with a magic of a type not practised in the sprawling kingdoms of Empire.

The armour bore old memories of rash decisions poorly made. Its presence beneath the last night of full moon would sour events.

Chimes broke out high above. Ninth bell, calling the heir to the sanctum.

The warrior or the courtier. As Empress, she’d one day have to be both. Today, the path was clear. She reached for the gown.

 

Brash trumpets split the air. Melanna began her descent of the long, marble stair towards the grassy mound and the triad of birch trees. Anticipation shivered bare skin at the base of her neck, quickened by the air’s crisp, sweet scent. Only the stoniest heart roamed the cloister’s open skies and felt nothing.

Beneath the largest tree, a simple stone block sat bathed in moonlight. The first altar at which the Goddess’ praises were intoned, or so legend told. Simple too was the circlet atop it. The first Emperor, Hadar Saran, had died in the Sceadotha’s dungeons, but the crown endured. Flesh withered and blood faded, Emperors came and went, but the crown abided. It was the Empire.

And it was all Melanna had ever desired. The crown, and what it meant for her to wear it.

A knot of Immortals stood on the root-woven path to the sunken sanctum gate, resplendent in emerald silks and golden scales; swords drawn against those who would disturb the meditations of the Emperor-to-be. Nearer, on the shore of the pool that made an island of the sanctum mound, a ring of temple wardens, garbed in brilliant white, and their long spears held at guard.

Melanna pressed on, neither too hurriedly nor too slow. She strove to ignore the murmurs and widening eyes from balconies set in concentric tiers above the cloister. Kings, princes and clan chiefs called from across the league-strewn Empire to acclaim one among their number more equal than the rest. Men of Rhaled, Corvant, Britonis, Silsaria and others. In garb and feature, they were as varied as fallen leaves in autumn. But women had no place here, save as servants or celebrants.

Certainly not as heir.

How many murmured with awe at her splendour? How many with disgust because she wore her sword at her back, the woven links of its belt crosswise at right shoulder to left hip? Melanna stifled a smile. She hadn’t left the warrior behind entirely. Better to remind her peers who she really was. That despite the soft promise offered by silk and the gossamer chains binding her hair, she was their equal. No, their better.

The chimes of tenth bell swept the courtyard. Conversation fell silent. The bare branches of the birch trees rippled gently in the cool breeze.

A second fanfare heralded Melanna’s arrival at the base of the stair. Head bowed in respect, she awaited the high priestess’ approach.

White robes brilliant in the moonlight, the old woman made stately procession over the narrow lattice-work bridge. Wardens crossed spears behind her, barring Melanna’s final approach to the sanctum mound.

“Why have you come?”

The priestess’ words were ritual. Scowl and unfavourable tone were not. Disgust that the heir was a woman, or because that woman bore a sword?

“To guide my Emperor out of Dark, and into Ashana’s light.” Melanna let her voice blossom, acoustics folding echoes beneath the words. “As a daughter will one day do for me.”

Fresh murmur broke out on the balconies. To the Golden Court, the Dark was ritual and history. An enemy overcome long ago, first by Ashana’s radiant sister, and once again – in the form of the Sceadotha – by Hadar Saran’s allies. But Melanna had walked within it. She’d carried the Goddess’ fire against it. And at the end, she’d failed.

None of the sourness left the priestess’ tone, but she persevered. “May the Goddess walk with you in the Dark.”

She stepped aside. Spears parted.

Melanna crossed the bridge. She gave ritual bow to the Immortals, and their golden wall split apart before her coming. Beyond, the stone pathway diverged, the upper fork arriving at altar and crown, the lower at the sanctum’s birchwood gate. Offering a bow to the former, Melanna took the latter, passing beneath the woven arch.

Once the double leaves of the gateway were behind, and Melanna deep in the sanctum’s gloom, she allowed the mask of unconcern to slip and her stride to quicken. The soft, damp fragrance of soil thickened as breathing shallowed. White crystals glimmered in the root-woven ceiling, shaping passageways and revealing shimmering insects scurrying across loose soil.

At last, the passageway widened into a broad chamber, dominated by a statue of Ashana – though the likeness little matched that of the Goddess who had guided Melanna since girlhood. Two Immortals flanked the Goddess. And before the statue, Kai Saran, Prince of the Silver Kingdom of Rhaled and scion of Emperors past, stood in silent contemplation, eyes closed and expression unreadable above a neat, greying beard.

Melanna knelt. “My prince. You are called to coronation.”

He spoke without turning. “And who calls me?”

“The one…” She swallowed to ease a throat suddenly parched. “The one who will follow.”

Though the words were part of the ritual, they felt impudent. Presumptive. Had her father felt thus addressing her grandsire? How would she feel to one day be reminded that her fate was to die so that another might rule? Proud, or resentful? What governed her father’s humours? They’d argued too often about this day for Melanna to be sure. She was the one to break tradition, but he’d made it possible. He’d be as notorious as she if affairs went ill.

“And will you serve me until that day? Will you guard my life with your own?”

“To my dying breath, my prince.”

Dark robes whispered against emerald-set golden scales. Dark eyes met hers. Expression rigid, he bore down, a mountain to her willow. The slight limp, a reminder of wounds that should have taken his life, little besmirched his grandeur. He swept back the dark folds of his woollen cloak and drew Melanna to her feet. Cheeks the colour of weathered teak cracked a smile. Then, uncaring he did so in full view of his Immortals, he drew her into an embrace.

“I shan’t ask you to obey, for I know you won’t,” he whispered. “But wherever the path leads from here, know that I am proud.”

Melanna sighed as her worries melted away. “Thank you, Father.”

“My prince,” he corrected. “Ritual must be observed.”

She pulled free and bobbed a rare curtsey. “Yes, my prince.”

“Better.” His lips twitched a smile. “Dagan? I am called to coronation. Announce me.”

The leftmost Immortal offered a deep bow and strode towards the passageway.

“Tell me,” said Melanna’s father. “How appalled are my peers?”

“Does it matter?” she replied bitterly. “They’re swine. Those who sneered to see me with a sword would gladly have entertained me without my gown.”

He grunted. “There are honourable men among them. And you will have to find one you can at least tolerate if this day is to mean anything.”

Could he not enjoy the moment without borrowing strife from the future? “A discussion better left for another hour, my prince.”

A rolling boom shook the chamber.

“The gates!” Dagan broke into a run and vanished into the root-woven passageway.

Melanna grasped at racing thoughts. “Tell me again of the honourable men in your court, Father.”

“They’d dare?” Her father drew his sword. “In the heart of the temple? In the Goddess’ sight?”

“Why not? They believe they do her work. They believe—”

A new sound rose in crescendo beneath the roots – a chorus of screeching crow-voices and thundering wings, growing ever louder. A sound she’d first heard months before at Tevar Flood and almost died for the privilege.

Kernclaw. She’d not known the name then, but she’d taken the trouble to learn it. An assassin lured from the shadows of the civilised world.

“Dagan!” she shouted.

A wet, tearing sound and a bellow of agony from the passageway cut through the squalling. The thump of a falling body. Harsh voices redoubled in fury. The chamber drowned in a rush of talons and beating wings.

The second Immortal vanished, overcome by the shadowy flock. Fresh screams rang out.

Across the chamber, corvine fragments coalesced into a hooded figure. One steel-taloned hand at the Immortal’s ravaged throat. The other against the torn and bloodied armour about his waist. Green eyes blazed beneath the ragged hood.

Melanna drew her sword. The Goddess’ sword. White flames sprang to life along the silvered blade. The shadow-flock parted with strident cry. Crows peeled away in panic.

Her father bellowed in pain. Melanna lunged to his side, bringing him within the safety of the firelight. She ignored the talons ripping at her hair, blotted the shrieking voices from her thoughts. Steel glinted within shadow. Metal scraped on metal. The weight vanished from her sword. Melanna’s flailing hand found soil and tangled roots.

Should’ve worn the armour. Not that armour had done Dagan or his fellow much good. And for all Melanna’s bitterness, she’d believed the temple safe ground, and the quarrels over the succession settled.

Honourable men. She’d teach them honour.

“What’s the matter, kernclaw?” Melanna shouted. “Afraid?”

Cruel laughter shook the chamber. “What a lioness! We should have charged more.”

Teeming bodies swamped everything beyond the sword’s light. The kernclaw could have been three paces away, or fled entirely.

Melanna glanced behind. Her father stood with his shoulder against the chamber’s roots. His sword-hand shook. His other pressed against the mess of torn scales and rushing blood at his flank. Already his robes were dark with it. His face was pale above his beard, tinged with greyish-green.

Poison?

“Go,” he breathed. “Leave me.”

Melanna’s throat tightened. “No.”

“You can’t best him. Save yourself.”

“I guard your life to my dying breath.” A booming chorus shuddered through the gloom. Fists and shoulders thumping against the timber gate. “Your Immortals are coming. We need only reach them.”

And if that wasn’t enough? Better to face the kernclaw in the cloister. The confines of the sanctum only made the shadow more oppressive and the clamour deafening. In the open, those advantages would fade. Theirs would grow, swollen by loyal blades.

Her father’s face twisted. He lurched into the passageway. Melanna gripped her sword tight and followed.

The sanctum gate emerged from shadow. Barred from within, and with two temple wardens crumpled at its foot.

Crow-voices blossomed anew.

Melanna spun about and lashed out at a shape half-seen. Talons gleamed. She struck them aside. Her wild backswing slashed at green eyes. The kernclaw shrieked. Eyes vanished into shadow.

“Father?”

She found him slumped against the wall, blood speckling his lips and the sword at his feet. Gasping for breath, he allowed Melanna to brace her shoulder beneath his, the mountain borne forth by the willow, stride by staggering stride.

The shadows of the passageway thickened with crow-voices.

The chorus of hammer-blows gave way to a crash of abused timber. A tide of Immortals trampled the ruined gates. They flooded past with swords drawn, plunging into shadow without hesitation. Screams vied with the thunder of wings.

Back arched beneath her father’s weight, Melanna lurched for the open air.

“Melanna…”

He slid away as the first moonlight touched Melanna’s face. She lowered him beside the altar. His fingers slipped from hers, leaving bloodied trails on golden silk.

“Father!”

She knelt and clutched his hand. Skirts clung to her legs, warm with his blood.

Uproar overtook the balconies as kings and princes descended into confusion. Some scrambled for the stairs, swords drawn and outrage on their lips. Others stared, frozen by events. One alone, resplendent in scarlet silks and the serpent of Icansae, reached the far neck of the bridge, steel naked in his hand, and two of his own Immortals at his back. Too distant to offer aid. The priestess who had so meanly welcomed Melanna stood immobile a few paces beyond.

Eleventh bell tolled, the distant bell ringers unaware that the ritual of coronation lay savaged beyond repair.

The last scream faltered. The sanctum’s empty gateway filled with shadow.

“Is this how the line of Saran fades?” The kernclaw’s mockery billowed. “In desperate flight? With wounds behind to mark its cowardice?”

Melanna let her father’s hand fall. She stood, her sire’s shuddering breaths to her back and the Goddess’ sword steady in her hands.

“You will not take him.” Her body shook to the words. Not the cold of fear, but anger’s searing flame. “Not while I live.”

“The commission was always for both.”

There it was. A truth known from the first. Her father died for loving her more than tradition.

She levelled the sword. “Dead men claim no coins.”

“And slain princessas no crowns.” Was his breathing at last ragged, or did Melanna hear only her own wild hopes? “I am of death, and you are nothing but a girl who clings to moonlight.”

Melanna drew up to her full height. “I am a princessa who commands it.”

With a screech of triumph, the crow-flock spread like monstrous wings.

A horn sounded. Not a trumpet, but the deep, breathy notes of a hunter’s salute, strident and sonorous. Then hoof beats, quickened to the gallop.

Mist spilled beneath bare branches, and a shape coalesced behind. A rider with an antlered helm, and a cloak streaming like smoke. The white stag he rode as steed was more suggestion that substance, flesh and blood only when moonlight brushed its flanks. The head of his long spear blazed with starlight.

Melanna’s heart skipped.

The crow-flock screeched, shadow scattering before starlight. The spear point ripped into the kernclaw’s chest and pinned him screaming to the bloodied soil.

The rider released the spear and wheeled about. His eyes met Melanna’s, green as the kernclaw’s were green, but vibrant where those of the crow-born promised only death.

He winded his horn once more. The thickening mist blazed. A pale woman in a shimmering gown stood beneath the trees. Another, a stranger to Melanna, stood close attendance, her skin shining silver.

Eleventh bell had sounded, and the Goddess Ashana had come.

The sword slipped from Melanna’s hand. Fire faded as it struck the grass.

Moonlight ebbed. The cloister fell silent at a sight lost to living memory. Kings and princes who would have died rather than pay homage to a woman knelt in silent reverence.

The Huntsman twisted the spear in the kernclaw’s chest. Shadows parted at the accompanying scream. All was moonlight and mist.

Ashana strode past the corpse without a glance and enfolded Melanna in embrace.

“Forgive my lateness. I have been away too long.”

Shame and joy mingled in Melanna’s heart. Shame for what had driven them apart, and joy at beholding her once again. “I failed you. I’m sorry.”

Ashana stepped away and bowed her head, straw-blonde tresses falling to frame her face. “The failure was mine. I have been timid, too afraid of taking action. No more. Do they still call you my daughter?”

“Some do, Goddess.”

“Ashana.” She delivered the rebuke with a soft smile. “Always Ashana.”

Melanna scowled away discomfort. The Goddess seldom enjoyed being named such. Indeed, she sometimes claimed not to be a goddess at all. “I beg you, save my father.”

“Those who would rule should never beg.”

“Then I ask.”

The smile faded. “Elspeth?”

The attendant drew close. Lustrous silver complexion turned dull as she slipped into the shadow of the trees. A slender woman, she was in aspect no older than Melanna, and like to the Goddess in all ways save ash-blonde hair cropped close.

She leaned near, her cold grey eyes but inches away.

“You’d have done better to guard him closer,” she whispered. “Such a disappointment. How can my mother love a failure so?”

Elspeth knelt beside Melanna’s father, her fingers dancing briefly across his brow before she straightened. “His wounds are bitter with poison. I need silver. I need the crown. And soon.”

Ashana’s sapphire eyes bored into Melanna’s. “The choice is yours. What is more important? Your father’s life, or his crown? Your crown?”

Melanna stiffened and faced the altar. The imperial crown. The heart of Empire. Their family’s history. Everything for which her father had fought. Everything she’d thought to claim. Her past and future were bound to it.

She stared at the latticework bridge, where the Icansae prince knelt. He and his kind would never forgive. Her father would never forgive. If she sacrificed the crown, there could be no throne. She’d become the wrecker of tradition in truth, as well as jealous whisper.

Melanna tore her eyes from the bridge, her gaze touching briefly on Elspeth’s. Her eyes held only contempt, as one bored with a performance that had overstayed its due. Only the Huntsman offered any solace. Or she thought he did. A slight dip of the head that might have existed only in her imagination, urging her to make a decision.

“Take it.” Melanna raised the silver circlet from its bed of ivy and held it out. “No woman can be worthy of a crown she chooses over those she loves.”

“The correct answer.”

Melanna barely heard Ashana’s soft-spoken words. She felt sure no other had.

Elspeth snatched the crown. “About time.”

Corrosion crept outward from her fingers as patina and tarnish, faster and faster as the rot spread. Black dust rushed away, and the crown was gone, reduced to twisted fragments. White light danced about Elspeth’s fingers, her hands once again silver as they had been in moonlight. Rent armour crumbled at her touch, and she set her hands to Kai Saran’s wounds.

His scream echoed across the cloister. His body convulsed on shoulders and heels. Melanna clenched a fist – her one concession to weakness as her sire writhed.

At last, the screams faded. Elspeth stepped away. Her bare arms were black to the elbow with charred skin, her expression dark with caged pain. Melanna’s father lay motionless in the drifting mist, his tan skin no longer marred by poison’s taint.

“He will live,” Elspeth said tautly. Her blackened fingers scratched at a charred palm, scattering dark flecks and revealing pale skin beneath. “If he so chooses.”

A final spasm and a rasping cough brought Melanna’s father to a propped elbow. A welter of dark blood spilled across his lips and dribbled into the mists.

“Charming,” Elspeth murmured.

Melanna fell to her knees. “Father?”

Eyes cracked open. A breathy voice hailed from a distant place. “Melanna?”

Wary of the eyes upon her from around the cloister, Melanna forewent the embrace she longed to offer, and instead held out a hand.

“Can you stand, my prince?”

She stuttered the words, barely able to speak for contrary emotions. Those emotions soared as his hand closed about hers. Not yet the strength of the mountain, but better than she’d dared hope. His breathing rasped more than she liked, but such things would improve while life thrived.

He rose, and at once bowed his head as he realised in whose presence he stood.

“Goddess.” A flicker of eye and lip betrayed a nervousness Melanna had never before witnessed. “I owe you my life.”

“You owe your daughter, not I.” With some surprise, Melanna noted that Ashana didn’t quibble her father’s use of the title. “Her sacrifice saved you.”

“Sacrifice?” His eyes sought Melanna’s.

She glanced away. “The crown is gone.”

His face tightened. “Then there can be no coronation. I cannot be Emperor.”

For a heartbeat Melanna wished she could undo the decision already made. But only for a heartbeat. A corpse wore no crown. If her father hated her for what she’d done, he’d at least be alive to do so. She could bear that burden, even if she spent the rest of her life seeking to atone. A life that love for her father had cast far adrift.

“No coronation?” Ashana shook her head and spread her arms wide. “The bell chimed invitation, and I am here. If I’m a goddess, and the Goddess comes only for coronation, then a coronation there must be. You owe your daughter your life, Prince Kai, and I owe her a crown. Only one of us need make good on the debt today.”

Reaching high above the mists and into the rays of the moon, she wove the brilliant light like thread. A shape coalesced. A circlet of silver that was not silver, for it shone even when gathered down into the shadows beneath the trees. Ashana held it level with her waist and tilted her head, her lips moving silently as one struck by a failure of memory at an inopportune moment.

“Prince Kai,” she said at last. “This crown is for your daughter, who led you out of Dark and into moonlight.”

Though the words were spoken to Melanna’s father, the sudden force in Ashana’s voice made them plain for all to hear.

“But you may bear it, for her and for me, until I call you to the gardens of Evermoon and all ephemeral burdens fall away. Do you accept this responsibility? Will you be my hand upon this world?”

His eyes met Melanna’s in question. Her mouth was ashen, so she nodded instead. Eyes still averted, he knelt at Ashana’s feet.

“Yes.”

Elspeth peeled another strip of charred skin from her arm and edged closer to Melanna. “A sword,” she hissed. “He cannot be crowned without a sword.”

And her father’s sword was lost in the sanctum. Melanna glanced at the trampled grass where her own had fallen. It caught light anew as she took it by the blade, but the moonfire made no mark upon her skin.

“For you, my prince.” She paused, savouring the words. “My Emperor.”

Melanna felt a pang as her father took the sword, as if she’d given up a piece of herself.

Ashana nodded. When she spoke, it was not with the wry warmth Melanna knew so well, but tones cold as ice and hard as glass. They carried across the cloister.

“I will not ask whose coin brought a vranakin to my temple. But from now on, a hand raised against the House of Saran is a hand raised against me. And among my many questionable virtues, patience cannot easily be found. You might seek it the rest of your brief lives and never catch a glimpse.”

She paused. The Huntsman ripped his spear free of the kernclaw’s corpse. The thud of its butt against the grassy mound was that of a stone casket falling closed.

The courtyard, already drowning in quiet, fell utterly silent.

“You name me Goddess, and as she I call upon you now! Dark is returning to this world! Will you bicker as it takes your children? Or will the Hadari Empire stand as one, and bring light to those who have squandered their own? The road ahead requires sacrifice and offers glory. Will you follow your Emperor to its end?”

Ashana’s expression shifted, the regal mask of an eternal goddess slipping to reveal a younger, unsteady soul beneath. But the moment passed, and Ashana was once again as unknowable and ageless as the heavens.

“Ashanael Brigantim! Saran Amhyrador!” The Icansae prince rose to one knee, his sword point-down on the bridge’s timbers. “For Goddess and Emperor!”

“For Goddess and Emperor!”

The cloister boomed with sound and fury as other voices took up the cry. Swords offered salute from balconies. The Huntsman watched unmoving, inscrutable; Elspeth with grey-eyed resentment. And Ashana, the Goddess who sometimes claimed not to be a goddess at all, set a circlet of moonsilver upon the brow of a man delivered from delirium to rule.

Thus Kai Saran – who had knelt a prince – rose an Emperor, and swept a sword swathed in moonfire to the heavens.

And Melanna Saranal, who had longed for this day all her life, wondered why she shivered.

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REVIEW: Ballistic by Marko Kloos

Ballistic, the second installment of the Palladium Wars by Marko Kloos, is an epic story that feels like a fluid transition from the first book. It picks up right where we left off after the gorgeous, albeit frustrating cliffhanger from the first installment in the series, Aftershocks. As this is a very character-driven series, world creation and tensions are very important to the plot; however, the characters are where this novel shines. Backstory wise, the story is centered within a six planet system in the Gaia system. In the first book, we are introduced to the very shaky tensions between planets and cultures after a long-drawn-out war. In many ways, their relations are a powder keg that could tip at any time. 

“when every economy in the system had been churning out weapons and war material to shovel into the furnace of conflict.” 

We have four main characters, the most interesting and I think could be considered the main protagonist of Aden Robertson. He is a former Gretian soldier, and an intelligence officer is masquerading as a Palladian. After a long stint in a POW camp, Aden is released in the first novel and is slowly trying to put some semblance of a life together. The violence of the past continually overshadows him. Because Aden’s mother is a Palladian, he was able to buy a new identity and back story and is slowly attempting to assimilate into the world. He is able to take a job working as a linguist on a merchant crew. When the crew’s newest job has them accidentally moving illegal and deadly goods, Aden’s past starts to catch up to him. 

Along with Aden, we have Solveig Aden’s sister and heir to their families’ wealthy empire. There is a comfort that Kloos has written between the two of them. Even though they hadn’t seen each other for 17 years, and they are very different people now, there is a connection between the two of them from blood and history. I enjoyed the slow rebuilding of their relationship and how Solveig had to sneak around to see Aden. I foresee a tense reuniting between Aden and his father in the next book. 

“It was a pretty good evening, though,” Tess said. “I mean, except for the part with the knives and the blood and the death threats.”

Idina played a foil to Aden in the first book. Idina is a born and bred Palladian and has lost many people both in the war and after. She has many grudges against Grecians because of it. Instead of being written as a character that sits opposite Aden politically, Idina is much more fleshed out in this book. I think that was necessary for Kloos to do; if she had remained as she was, she would have been a token character. Now, I am interested in her future and her journey. As it stands, Idina has been transferred to a new position and has developed a friendship with her partner named Dahl. This friendship is changing who Idina is and how she views the world.

The last protagonist is Dunstan, a commander in the Rhodian Navy. We don’t have as much interaction with him as I would have liked. He is a strong character in both personality and morals. His beliefs are central to who he is. He and Aden had some limited interaction, and Dunstan has some excitement later in the book, but I am looking forward to seeing more out of this character in future books.

“Odin’s Wolves,” Dahl said next to her in a tired voice. “Gods and predators. At what point in all our histories has anything good happened whenever some fool put those on a single banner to march under?”

The main crux of this installment in the series is Aden’s identity and finding a dangerous weapon in Aden’s crew’s care. There is a sense of forewarning in this. It seems like no matter what Aden does to leave his past behind; it always comes clawing back. There is undoubtedly a robust military aspect to this story, but secondary to the character’s journeys. I find that refreshing as many military based science fiction stories get bogged down in the minutiae and forsake character growth. If you are very much into Military science fiction, you may like this story as I did, but you should know ahead of time what kind of book this is. 

Ending wise, this story throws some huge things out there. I was not prepared for the drama of the story’s last moments. It is not for everyone; we are again left with a bit of a cliffhanger. But I don’t think Ballistic is structured like most serial novels. It feels much more like one long, stretched out book that has been partitioned because of length. 

All in all, Ballistic is an exciting and satisfying second helping of the Palladium Wars. There is character growth, military strategy, and excitement. The pacing is solid, and I am very excited to read the next book and see how the four protagonists’ lives get even more intertwined. 

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REVIEW: Betrayal’s Shadow by Dave-Brendon de Burgh

Betrayal’s Shadow drops you straight into the middle of a gritty world, full of intrigue and quite a bit of violence. Mixing high fantasy with elements of horror, this book will stick with you for quite a while.

The story is told from several points of view. To begin, we see General Brice Serholm lead the king’s elite soldiers to look into troubling reports of rebellion. Instead of a rebellious population, Brice and his soldiers encounter a mysterious magic, one that none of them has seen before. This sets off a chain of events with consequences that are impossible to predict.

The other points of view include King Jarlath, a dangerous and powerful figure; Alun, a Blade Knight; Seira, a knife-wielding courtesan; Del’Ahrid, the king’s advisor and a snake in the grass; Khyber (who I refuse to say anything about for fear of spoiling anything); and Cobinian, who possessed quite the cunning plan.

There is no learning curve in Betrayal’s Shadow. From page one, there is violence, double-crossing, deception, and political maneuvering. Instead of the dreaded info dump, you are expected to pick things up as the story progresses. It is both refreshing and- at times- confusing.

Don’t expect to see a “good guy”. Instead, each character is painted a different shade of morally gray. If you are looking for a book where you can root for a character to succeed, you’re in the wrong place. Every single person is delightfully flawed, and more than a little messed up. From the King, with his mysterious magical powers, to Cobinian, whose machinations are fascinating and disconcerting, each is an integral part of the plot.

While the fight scenes were amazing, it was the smaller moments–the moments of questioning, lies, and hushed conversations- that kept me enthralled. The author definitely knew how to turn even the simplest sigh into an important gesture. The story ramps up as it goes along, hurtling headlong into a breathtaking conclusion.

There are some editing issues that could use a little bit of attention, but the vast scope of the world, the intricate storyline, and the epic fight scenes more than make up for any errors in text. A harsh but brilliant world peopled with some of the most complicated characters I’ve read in quite a while make this a book to read.

Read Betrayal’s Shadow by Dave-Brendon de Burgh

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