January was a month where I read a bit of everything: fantasy, literary fiction and even poetry. What better way to start the new year?

Fiction

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

The Devils may be Joe Abercrombie’s best novel yet, and that’s saying something given his backlist of contemporary fantasy classics.

The Devils isn’t set in Abercrombie’s usual fantasy realms but instead takes place in an alternate history where Europe is divided by a religious schism and facing an invasion of… elves.

Yes, elves.

The reader is thrown into this familiar yet strange world to follow a papal special forces squad as they escort an heir to the eastern throne despite the wishes of the current occupants of the throne. And this is where things get really fantastic because this papal squad are mostly supernatural creatures — a vampire, a necromancer, a werewolf, a soldier who can’t die, an elf and so on. Those trying to stop them are even more supernatural — animal soldiers and fish pirates and sorcerers and the like.

It’s a crazed, bizarre and action-packed fantasy thriller that invokes other genre classics — the Magnificent Seven, Frankenstein, the Island of Dr. Moreau and more.

Above all, it’s classic Abercrombie, though — as darkly humorous as it is grimly violent and morally ambiguous.

If you’re looking for similar reads, try Sebastien de Castell’s The Malevolent Seven series, Christopher Buehlman’s The Blacktongue Thief or Cameron Johnston’s The Maleficent Seven.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233800039-the-devils

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Ink & Sigil by Kevin Hearne

The first in a parallel series to Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid tales, Ink and Sigil follows Al MacBharris, a sort of magician in Glasgow. Al uses sigils and other arcane tricks to try to keep the realms of supernatural beings such as hobgoblins and faerie hidden from our own. But when his apprentice winds up dead, Al is drawn into a secret plot to unleash chaos upon his world. A fun yet dark tale with plenty of action, a great magic system and a promise of many adventures to come.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49183690-ink-sigil

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Cherry by Nico Walker

The hallucinatory chronicles of a young American man who moves through life in a drug haze, joining the army and shipping off to Iraq, then returning to wander through a life of bank robberies and other misadventures. Jesus’s Son meets Catch-22.

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36521370-cherry

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Poetry

NMLCT by Paul Vermeersch

Rereading NMLCT by Paul Vermeersch and my mind is still blown. How to make sense of these poems that question the reality and hallucinations of our post-truth society. As if some haunted god was trying to speak to us through AI prompts, perhaps even to warn us.

“Is that what I want? I don’t know.”

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228630505-nmlct