Chains of the Heretic by Jeff Salyards, 2016

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The emperor of a confederation seizes the means of control — mind witches! — and declares himself absolute ruler. A dissident confederate sends out a squad to meet with the disposed emperor to plot a restoration. The squad is run down by the emperor’s troops and escapes through the looking glass, where they find former gods, who respond harshly. After a bit of to and fro, the reduced squad escapes back through the looking glass. After plotting and skull-duggery, the restoration is almost at hand when — double cross! — the Etch-a-Sketch gets well and truly shaken. As confederates squabble over what new picture to draw, the former gods visit with murderous intent, setting the stage for the final, epic battle. Whew.

This is the final book in the three-book Bloodsounder’s Arc. Within the constraints of a genre story set among highly organized murderous thugs, Salyards’ plotting blows hot and cold. On the hot side, the double cross is plain on the page, but, Purloined-Letter-like, he hides it in the obvious place. On the cold side, the former gods show up and kill everyone in two cities, tens of thousands of people, in a couple of days and without breaking a sweat. Then, faced with highly organized murderous thugs, the former gods apparently forget everything they’ve recently done and revert to spears and shields, arrows and rocks. I mean, I get it; it’s a lot more exciting to read about arrows and rocks flying around than it is to read about people being driven into madness and death by a shimmering haze, but still... For fun, The mind witches, introduced in the second book, will continue to trigger your inner Neal deGrasse Tyson should you have one: if the former gods echo-locate using memories, and Soffjian, a renegade mind witch embedded in the squad, can absorb memories, why doesn’t she act like stealth bomber? My recommendation is you waste your time reading mysteries set in the here and now, but if you, like me, are at the mercy of the Humble Bundle, then this book, and the Bloodsounder’s Arc, is an o.k. way to spend your time.