Book Review: Council of the Dead

Title: Council of the Dead

Author: K.A. Ashcomb

Date: 2024

Publisher: Liquid Hare

Length: 494 pages

ISBN: 978-952-69026-8-5

Quote: "Like a curse, they were doomed to roam the land in search of meaning."

The Council of the Dead is volume five in the series that included Mechanics of the Past. I have only the two volumes. This is one series that I want to collect. It's not at all like Xanth or Discworld but it is, like those series, a silly enough fantasy to keep me giggling while its deep philosophical undercurrents keep me awake. 

How often do I actually like fiction? I mean, beyond noting its good and bad points and who is likely to like it. How many novels would I pay money to own after I'd read the PDF version? Not many. This is one. If you feel that your mind is similar to mine, run don't walk to the bookstore to order all five of the volumes available so far. 

That said, I should mention that this is a grimmer, punkier story than Mechanics of the Past. It takes place almost entirely in, or in a cave deep under, Necropolis. None of the characters is fully human; they've all mutated into occult-type fantasy fiction characters. They live in the darksome land of postmodern, post-Christian concepts of life and death where there are no real gods and there is no real morality, and so they search for meaning for their bleak atheistic lives, some worshipping false gods like Death and the Kraken, others infatuated with the magical powers their city offers some of its citizens.

This is the home of Otis, who recreated the Finnish sampo as a machine powered by the vital force of dead people, thereby depriving their chance to be re-embodied even as ghouls, which they felt as a heinous wrong. Otis is in prison, awaiting sentencing. His fate depends partly on whether or not he can in fact make another machine like the one that's been destroyed. 

Meanwhile the city, with its various sectors and factions--witches, ghouls, vampires, necromancers, ghosts, imps, zombies, and bureaucrats, which may be the worst of all--act out a gloomy yet insightful study of practical politics. Will mitigating the fundamental evil of Necropolis destroy one of the nicer witches? What is it like to be banished to the underground city of the cave-dwelling, corpse-eating ghouls? Will the Kraken accept the deification some Necropolitans want to give him? 

This plot may sound too noir for some readers. They should read something else. If you don't go into satanic panic or depression when this kind of monsters are mentioned, but recognize them as metaphors for different approaches to applied politics, you will like this book. If you're a Christian, it will make you feel sorry for, and perhaps help you understand, the mental plight of unbelievers. If not, I don't know what you'll make of the ideas in the book, but you'll probably enjoy it.