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The Fifth Place #5
Dancer
‘We’ll die one way or another. Better to die with a smokin gun in my hand and blood on my knife.’
No more running.
Sick of being hunted, and faced with no other option that isn’t simply giving up, our group of antiheroes have decided to bring the fight to the enemy. No matter that they are only a few, damaged and chaotic, and the enemy is immeasurably vast, not to mention existing in another dimension, outside of space and time. The odds are absurd, but they must try.
But before they can even get to the Fifth Place, first they must find the Door that leads there. And that involves journeying far below the earth, through the dead subterranean city of Old Ghoum.
It is the stuff of nightmares, both of monsters and mental anguish. It will take everything they have to keep going – and retain the last shreds of their sanity.
The Fifth Place is about the universe under mysterious control, and the group of antiheroic misfits determined to survive it and be free no matter what comes. Ideal for fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower books, Garth Ennis’s Preacher comics, Joe Abercrombie, and the Farscape TV series, The Fifth Place is for those who want a pull-no-punches adult series merging western, sci-fi, gritty fantasy, dystopian, adventure and horror genres, with a diverse, irreverent and tragically flawed cast of characters to root for against all odds.
No more running.
Sick of being hunted, and faced with no other option that isn’t simply giving up, our group of antiheroes have decided to bring the fight to the enemy. No matter that they are only a few, damaged and chaotic, and the enemy is immeasurably vast, not to mention existing in another dimension, outside of space and time. The odds are absurd, but they must try.
But before they can even get to the Fifth Place, first they must find the Door that leads there. And that involves journeying far below the earth, through the dead subterranean city of Old Ghoum.
It is the stuff of nightmares, both of monsters and mental anguish. It will take everything they have to keep going – and retain the last shreds of their sanity.
The Fifth Place is about the universe under mysterious control, and the group of antiheroic misfits determined to survive it and be free no matter what comes. Ideal for fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower books, Garth Ennis’s Preacher comics, Joe Abercrombie, and the Farscape TV series, The Fifth Place is for those who want a pull-no-punches adult series merging western, sci-fi, gritty fantasy, dystopian, adventure and horror genres, with a diverse, irreverent and tragically flawed cast of characters to root for against all odds.
407 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 14, 2021
2 people want to read
About the author
Set Sytes
34 books61 followersAuthor and purveyor of all things fantastical, dark and weird.
Please don't feed him onions.
Please don't feed him onions.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 8, 2021
I'm not sure what I entirely think of this book. At times it was fast-paced adventure, moving so quick it almost left me breathless. But other times it was slower, darker, and more brooding. Neither is a particularly bad quality for a book to have, and the dichotomy played well for the most part. Yet now that I'm done, I find myself unsure what to think of the ending—and it certainly left me with plenty to think about. A mountain of thinking, a boundless sea of thinking whose inhabitants I cannot quite fathom but know that they lurk just beneath the surface, waiting for me to pluck them up and devour them or be devoured in turn.
As for the story itself, well, it certainly started as I expected. Jay and the others prepared for their assault upon the Fifth place, to sow what damage they could against something that is almost so large and unconquerable as to defy comprehension. There was just that small matter of old Ghoum to deal with first...
And deal with it they do. When that chapter arrives—and you'll know the one I speak of when you read it, although likely not until you are in the thick of it and thus so entangled in its multiplicitous web that you cannot hardly draw breath for the layers it will drape upon you—each and every character finds themselves facing their own inner demons, even as they are beset and haunted by an endless stream of outer ones as well. It is the lowest point in the entire story, and yet its highest reaching as well.
There is, of course, also the promised confrontation with the Fifth Place, but after what came before it this carried with it such a breath of fresh air as to almost, almost, feel like something of a letdown. There the anti-heroes faced insurmountable odds, yes, but of a form and function for which they are quite suited to countering. That which awaited them in the dark and quiet of old Ghoum?
Not so much.
I won't say much more about this book for fear of wandering into spoiler territory, only that the ending has an almost colossal sense of finality, while still managing to lay the scene for the next, penultimate, challenge. This is not an easy book to read at times, and demands much of its readers, but with that burden also comes extra weight and meaning to its final outcomes and consequences. Everything that has been building since Volsyng, perhaps even before that, every conversation about the nature of society and those that would impose order upon chaos, and the prices that must be paid to do so, sees its fruition here. Or perhaps the fruition is only beginning; there are two more volumes still to go, after all.
If I could advise anything to a potential reader, it is this: avoid reading Dancer expecting the sense of lighthearted adventure that so permeated Wulf, and I do not think you will walk away disappointed. This is a tale of darkness, and loss, and of the grinding of gears larger than us all.
As for the story itself, well, it certainly started as I expected. Jay and the others prepared for their assault upon the Fifth place, to sow what damage they could against something that is almost so large and unconquerable as to defy comprehension. There was just that small matter of old Ghoum to deal with first...
And deal with it they do. When that chapter arrives—and you'll know the one I speak of when you read it, although likely not until you are in the thick of it and thus so entangled in its multiplicitous web that you cannot hardly draw breath for the layers it will drape upon you—each and every character finds themselves facing their own inner demons, even as they are beset and haunted by an endless stream of outer ones as well. It is the lowest point in the entire story, and yet its highest reaching as well.
There is, of course, also the promised confrontation with the Fifth Place, but after what came before it this carried with it such a breath of fresh air as to almost, almost, feel like something of a letdown. There the anti-heroes faced insurmountable odds, yes, but of a form and function for which they are quite suited to countering. That which awaited them in the dark and quiet of old Ghoum?
Not so much.
I won't say much more about this book for fear of wandering into spoiler territory, only that the ending has an almost colossal sense of finality, while still managing to lay the scene for the next, penultimate, challenge. This is not an easy book to read at times, and demands much of its readers, but with that burden also comes extra weight and meaning to its final outcomes and consequences. Everything that has been building since Volsyng, perhaps even before that, every conversation about the nature of society and those that would impose order upon chaos, and the prices that must be paid to do so, sees its fruition here. Or perhaps the fruition is only beginning; there are two more volumes still to go, after all.
If I could advise anything to a potential reader, it is this: avoid reading Dancer expecting the sense of lighthearted adventure that so permeated Wulf, and I do not think you will walk away disappointed. This is a tale of darkness, and loss, and of the grinding of gears larger than us all.
Displaying 1 of 1 review