THE SWORDS OF NIGHT AND DAY

Few if any readers can follow the chronology of British heroic fantasist Gemmell’s conjoined series, assembled under the Drenai Saga, which tells of Druss the Axeman began in 1984 with Legend.

There have been nine subsequent volumes, but in story-chronology, Legend turns out to be sixth in the saga—and other installments also hop back and forth in time. (Actual first novel in story-chronology is Waylander.) Last year’s White Wolf, a prequel to Legend, focused on Skilgannon the Damned and foretold Druss’s death at Delnoch. However: White Wolf (which puts Druss in the later stages of his life) is a prequel to Legend (!) while the present entry, a sequel to the White Wolf prequel to Legend, has Skilgannon dead and buried on a small island in a mountain stream, where he lies for a thousand years until resurrected by The Eternal, a sorceress, to help fight the ghastly Joinings, half-human/half-beasts that have overrun Drenai. Further confounding the timeline is the return of Druss (dead at Delnoch) to join with Skilgannon against the enemy and save the day at the novel’s climactic battle. Let’s add that the whole saga (aside from White Wolf and its thousand-year-leaping present sequel) has been reissued in three three-volume paperbacks—though in order of publication and not of story-chronology.

Strong resurrection scene, crisply told—but, as Conrad might say of this series, “The fog, the fog!”