I’ve read some Pulizer prize winners, books from Fitzgerald, Capote, Neruda, DeLillo, Burnett, Bradbury, and Calvino and Patchett. 800 pages of Moby Dick. And then there’s this, and yet it’s such a relief reading this after all of that. Skulls and mummies in dungeons and forests. It’s the bratwurst in your hands after eating veal blanquette with silver cutlery. And yet it’s so good, you nod, as fat and oil drips of your chin.

I don’t mean this is the pot noodle of books though. The story fits together and is written well — and the English used by Richard A. Knaak is pretty high level. There many words I had to look up (such as ‘dias’).

Just the extremes are a bit annoying: every death is the cruelest ever, every bite of food the foulest ever, every stranger the eeriest ever, every hunger is the deepest ever. It’s fantasy on steroids, so if that’s your thing or you’re looking for a break from higher literature, come to Sanctuary.