THE INTERMINABLES

The war to end all wars

released OUT NOW! 416 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Paige Orwin Publisher angry robot

Some fantasy novels want to show off their worldbuilding, filling every page with explanations of magic and battles, explaining in detail their history and rules. Others just give you little hints; a bit of history here, a bit of magic theory there, letting you do the work of building this into a detailed world. The Interminables is one of the latter – and it’s all the better for it.

Edmund Templeton is a wizard, survivor of the Wizard War – which isn’t surprising, as he’s also immortal. Known as the Hour Thief, he takes snippets of time from others and uses it to prolong his own life. He struggles to help restore a world devastated by the after-effects of war, helped by his friend Istvan Czernin, a “Conceptual” who in some ways is the ghost of a long-dead Hungarian doctor and in others an (often terrifying) avatar of the entire First World War.

This isn’t always an easy book to read, and the lack of further details and explanations can be frustrating at times. Stick with it, though, and it will reward you with a world of wonders and horrors, alongside a tale of a deep and desperate friendship: a thief and a war, trying their best to save as many lives as they can.

This novel came out of Orwin’s love of now-closed MMORPG City Of Heroes: she wanted to preserve her characters.