Working God's Mischief (Instrumentalities of the Night)
The latest novel in the Instrumentalities of the Night poses a whole new set of crises. The empress is dead. The patriarch is a hunted fugitive, in no position to sort out the consequences of the impending war of the gods. And that war will be the worse for the most potent of the Instrumentalities, the Windwalker, having been slain by a mortal. This makes the Instrumentalities uneasy, and uneasy gods are not pleasant to have around. The tone is even darker for the story being told mostly from the point of view of the grunts or at least their leaders, who must lay their lives on the line so often that, even if their side wins, they will not be around to enjoy it. But then, Glen Cook has been doing that in his fantasy since The Black Company (1984) and still does it very well. --Roland Green