This is an indie-published fantasy horror novel that I discovered because I follow the author on TikTok, and I liked what I was hearing. While I’m not sure it was quite what I was expecting, I really enjoyed it. When Tomas Greenleaf graduates at the top of his military class, he is promoted to captain and sent on a special assignment to Lahar, a small village in the remote, frozen middle-of-nowhere. However, he doesn’t really know why he’s there, and the villagers don’t want him there; he’s an outsider associated with the imperial government, and they don’t like or trust him. As he starts to get to know them, he also learns about monsters that the villagers don’t talk about publicly.
The book doesn’t dive into the horror very quickly. Stogner builds up the world and allows readers to get to know Greenleaf and the culture of Lahar, all of which I appreciated, not least because he has subsequently published other books set in this world. There is actually less time spent with the monsters, known as trijjat, than I expected. I thought that we would end up learning more about them, and while they do play an important role in the novel, the focus is more on Greenleaf’s learning about Lahar and how the empire operates and completing his mission. Stogner does make the trijjat suitably horrifying, though.
The author posted a video about how he wanted to write about characters in this world who are basically regular people. They’re not the big movers and shakers you might see in other fantasy books. They’re not overturning governments or changing society as a whole. This was helpful context when I got to the ending, which I think has the potential to frustrate some readers. However, even without the context, I think I could recognize what the author was going for. Sometimes life just isn’t fair, and all we can do is our best to live within the confines of that life.
This was a well-written, entertaining read, and at some point I’ll probably check out some of Stogner’s other books set in this world.