In the first part of Travagline’s debut SF duology, an itinerant entertainer in a post-apocalyptic, dark-age future keeps memories of the old world alive through storytelling.

About 1,000 years ago, an atomic world war broke out, creating recurring, yearslong nuclear winters around the globe. Civilization, of sorts, has made a slow, painful return, and regional warlords, kings, and guilds compete ruthlessly for power. In the land of Lyrinth in what used to be part of North America, Gnochi Gleeman is an “entertainer,” wandering from place to place, telling his tales of the “first age” world and its achievements. The vagrant guitarist with failing vision may seem unimpressive, but Gleeman is actually an accomplished blade fighter and schemer—a requirement for self-defense, as fanatic “Luddites,” opposed to the progress that brought ruin to mankind, are also a danger to him. But currently, Gleeman has greater concerns. He’s been forced to undertake a mission of treachery and assassination by a man named Jackal, who had his family kidnapped. A complication arises when Cleo, the runaway teenage daughter of an aristocrat, impulsively joins Gleeman, and he doesn’t have the will to force her away. Together, they find tenuous shelter with a “menagerie”—a traveling circus that’s actually a kind of mobile commando unit in disguise. Travagline effectively keeps a lot of subterfuge under wraps and embeds key plot points in flashbacks; moreover, readers get an anthology of Gleeman’s titular tales that are woven into the tapestry of the larger narrative. They include everything from a sort of experimental-theater playlet (“God is a Dinosaur”) to a Civil War spin on Frank R. Stockton’s classic 1882 story “The Lady, or the Tiger?” to a World War II alternate-history tale in which Nazis gain an advantage in 1941. These lengthy asides do push the main plotline to the margins, and other elements, including magic, spirit animals, and psychic phenomena, intrude into Gleeman’s world, leaving a rather peculiar taste; readers may wonder: Was that really a talking white wolf or a piece of one of Aesop’s—or rather Gleeman’s—fables? The finale provides a cliffhanger that virtually severs the story in two.

A dense, knotty SF tale set in an age of neo-barbarism.