In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours they’re wielders of actual magic. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. The protagonist of Bardugo’s ( King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story. Martin’s gold-standard work, but it’s nothing bad the story grinds to a halt at points, but at others, there’s plenty of action. Gwynne’s effort pales in comparison to George R.R. It’s a good move: You never can tell when a wolven ally will come in handy, especially when there are wyrms around. There’s treachery aplenty, peppered with odd episodes inspired by other sources, such as an Androcles-and-lion moment in which Corban rescues a fierce wolven (“rarely seen here, preferring the south of Ardan, regions of deep forest and sweeping moors, where the auroch herds roamed”). There are bad doings afoot in Tintagel-beg pardon, the Banished Lands-where nobles plot against nobles even as there are stirrings of renewed titanomachia, that war between giants and humans having given the place some of its gloominess.

The protagonist is a 14-year-old commoner named Corban, son of a swineherd, who, as happens in such things, turns out to be more resourceful than his porcine-production background might suggest. Debut author Gwynne’s overstuffed but slow-moving contribution to the genre-the first in a series, of course-wears the latter source on its sleeve: “Fionn ap Toin, Marrock ben Rhagor, why do you come here on this first day of the Birth Moon?” Why, indeed? Well, therein hangs the tale. Tolkien, and Tolkien begins with the Icelandic sagas and the Mabinogion. A middling Middle Earth–ish extravaganza with all the usual thrills, chills, spills and frills.Īll modern fantasy begins with J.R.R.

Malice by john gwynne