I had previously read and reviewed RazörFist’s first novel, the first of his Nightvale series, and Death Mask is the second.
His Nightvale series is set on another world and the stories are fantasy/sword and sorcery in a medieval-style world with magic. Think, not so much Conan, but Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I see this one is noted as “sword and thievery,” even though magic does exist in this world.
The volume has several pieces of artwork, showing characters and scenes in the story. And we get several maps. I do have to criticize the maps, as they are hard to read. I think this is a problem with the reproduction in the book that I hope is improved in the future.
The first story was set in the city of Menuvia, the former capital, but still an important city, of the kingdom of Vale. But after the events of that story, our main character, the thief Xerdes, has moved on. This time we find him in the city of Kara’Zin, the capital city of Narzan, a nation to the west of Vale. The city had been settled and ruled by humans, but now is ruled by the Bords, a reptilian race.
Here, Xerdes is hired by a barkeep, a former nobleman, who is looking for his missing wife. He asked Xerdes to head to his former estate, located far in the “Whispering Wastes.” A simple job, yes? Except along the way he is almost assassinated by a group of Bords. He gets attacked by a Mongolian death worm. Sorry, whispering windserpent. And he finds the estate is flooded and now a nesting ground for them, and meets the man’s “wife” and her henchman, who wants him to find something in the vault for them. And there is a slight problem with the water there…
Along the way he meets and is joined by a feras-sun, one of a race of “wolf people.” What makes it difficult is that this one can’t speak.
And if all the threats and betrayals he has to deal with aren’t enough, there seems to be someone or something who is tracking Xerdes. Maybe something from Menuvia? Will he survive that encounter when he does meet him? Oh, and what is the importance of the large coin? Guess we’ll find out in a future story.
As I’m not a big fan of sword-and-sorcery story and thought it would be slow going for me, but I quickly got into the story and enjoyed it a lot.
Following the story we get a 60+ page appendix with various information on this world, including its history, the various races, and more. This is some great world-building here. There are several maps here, though I wish they were a little more readable.
The next stories of Xerdes are The Faceless Phantom and Children of the Charnel House. I have no idea when as the next work from RazörFist is the western-vengeance comic The Ghost of the Badlands, which I look forward to.
