You know what it is about this book that does it for me? It’s not the “military sci-fi” schtick. It’s the grit and the coolness of writing a fantasy novel that treats the mundane with the more ardent emphasis. Sure, there’s tons of black magic including presumably necromancy, but there’s also an eerie pulp mystery and lots of subtle world-building that most other writers would rely on heavy exposition and unnecessary dialogue to accomplish. Cook’s wicked pen details all of this as we read his narrative like we are discovering an ancient but not so distant tome of a possible-earth where evil doesn’t need to exhaust itself speaking to its now-necessity (because where are you going to find good in the world? In you? In mercenaries, revolutionary idealists that use violence, fantastic sorcerers on magic carpets whose powers and deeds have corrupted them so utterly they are beyond human recognition?) I was prepared to slog through a sequel saturated with overly wrought darkness and antipathetic bravado, but was instead treated to a weird and fascinating haunted house pulp crime thriller with epic battle and mythical-proportioned evil and despair told through the povs of unlikely not-quite-heroes. What a fun book! 4.5/5