The Black Guard by A.J. Smith
Book One of the ‘Chronicles of the Long War’ is very good and I look forward to Book Two ‘The Dark Blood’. The lands of Ranen, Ro and Karesia are plunged into war, chaos and death when the witchy Seven Sisters decide to revive the worship of a Lovecraftian eldritch abomination of a God. Loads and loads of characters react to this in various ways. Some actively horrible types have zero social empathy and voluntarily abdicate their will to the Seven Sisters. Others reject such an unholy alliance and begin a devastating and possibly futile fight back against the Sisters and the thing that they worship. As for the Seven Sisters themselves, they have pseudo-emotions, enjoy a delicious sense of notoriety and are unrealistically heinous. This is a good fantasy tale of a medieval world facing Lovecraftian horror, I enjoyed it a lot.
Best Lines:
“I decoded enough not to want to decode the rest.”
“Some books shouldn’t be read.”
“In strange aeons even death may die.”
“A land where man should not venture.”
