Legends Of The Red Sun

A strange mix of post-apocalyptic and steampunk fantasy, but a rewarding one. In a futuristic world, the sun is dying out and the world is slowly turning to ice with the few wealthy preparing for the ice age, while the rest of humanity will be left to die. Standing on the edge of this depressing and doomed world is the great city of Villjamur. It’s a city of great potential that juxtaposes the wondrous and the horrible – a metaphor perhaps for man himself. It’s a city and land where the goal is to survive. The world is populated mostly by humans but there are a few sentient machines around too.  The plot is complex with a number of things going on:  This is a complex and ambitious piece of fantasy which is both a good and a bad thing. The author presents a world on the edge of an ice age (the Freeze) where the privileged few are preparing for a few decades of difficulty while many of the rest of the unfortunate population will be left to their own devices. This is a world populated mainly by humans, but there are a few sentient non-humans in the cast too which makes for a potentially more interesting set of characters. The basic plot is something we’ve seen before: murder, mystery, mayhem  and magic.  But into the mix are added scheming politicians, imperial politics, deadly soldier assassins, weird religions and crazy cultists. So if you fancy dark fantasy tale set on an exotic landscape with strange alien races, steampunk and magic, murder and mysteries, you’ll  love this series. You might think of this series as a cross between Jack  Vance’s Dying Earth, China Mieville