THE MACE OF MALICE

In this fantasy sequel, a monarch continues to dictate the epic exploits of his life to a scribe.

King Elberon, about to celebrate his 65th birthday, sits on the Coral Throne in Tradewind City. The Astral Telescope has revealed that he’ll live to be 130 years old, but he’ll die in the bathroom rather than on the battlefield. Then again, Elberon may perish when the elf Lithaine, a former battle partner, arrives with an army in revenge for using him to “seal the breach between Hell and Woerth.” Elberon relates his life experiences to a scribe, recounting the mission in Hell with his warrior companions that resulted in a roll of the Fire Die, at Beelzebub’s behest, which selected Lithaine for imprisonment. Other major events remembered by the king include the Fall of Helene, an all-out war against Lord Eckberd the Pestilent; the rescue of Melinda the Blade, Elberon’s ex-wife, from Hell; and the Battle of Faerie Wood against the alien Crimson Hand. The monarch recalls that he, Lithaine, and the others in their party, Sir Malcolm the elf and Amabored the barbarian, had the overarching mission to stop Koschei the Deathless from returning to Woerth. To that end, they collected Koschei’s 10 powerful Phylaxes (or artifacts), such as the Mace of Malice and the Fell Phallus, to limit the dark lord’s reach. As Elberon explores his past, ruminating on deep personal regrets becomes unavoidable. He left Melinda for the shield maiden Cassiopeia of Collanna only to watch his second wife waste away from the disease known as “the creep.”

Ferguson strides high on his love for classic rock and tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons in this extravagant sequel. As fans of the previous volume, The Screaming Skull (2018), will remember, Elberon and company live and breathe enough debauchery to impress Mötley Crüe biographer Neil Strauss. Cassie, in perhaps the tamest example, asks Elberon: “What is it about good sex that makes you have to take a crap?” Ferguson’s imagination delivers a consistent deluge of outré concepts, like sex cannibals, but also devices useful to the plot, including “a rope ladder leading to an extradimensional panic room.” There are also music and film references aplenty sprinkled throughout, inserted for comedic effect if nothing else, as when Lithaine quotes Ripley from the film Aliens with the line “I say we nuke the site from orbit.” The most grounded and successful portion of the story is the depiction of Cassie’s illness and death. The cancerlike creep doesn’t allow for magical resurrections and causes the deterioration of body and mind. Here, the author drains all the overcooked bawdiness from his prose and creates genuine dramatic stakes that don’t exist elsewhere in the novel. Cassie has “skin like tissue paper” and the “shrunken limbs of an old woman,” images that are hard to digest whether readers remember a loved one’s illness or not. Frequently, the engaging adventure is chopped into nonlinear episodes, and it soon becomes clear that Elberon’s remembrances will carry readers into the next volume. Wherever the series goes next, fans will likely crave a smoother forward momentum and fewer curse-laden dungeon crawls.

This enjoyable fantasy invites fans to the literary equivalent of rolling the dice with friends.