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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Autumnal" data-source="post: 9829415" data-attributes="member: 6671663">I’d hoped this would be my last book of 2025, but missed it by a hundred fifty pages or so: Wolfhound Century, by Peter Higgins. This has been my library for years, and finally I go to it. Wow, it’s great. It’s a police procedural whose investigation leads to matters of politics and revolution. And magic.The setting is a Russia-like land in a different world. To the east there’s a forest that goes on endlessly. For almost four hundred years, dead fallen angels have dropped from the sky, and their stony flesh empowers humans bearing some of it to wield magic; implants of the stuff identify the police. There are natural giants, and technomagical golems who channel angelic power through nerve structures from dead animals. And so on.There aren’t any big infodumps, and sometimes it takes a while to explain things. But explanations do come, about the environment and the history. The nation is losing a war, and there’s a secret war within the government to be the ones to set the terms of what comes next. Our characters are stuck in the midst of it all, of course.I’m loving it. The depth of the world building and classy elegant calmness of narration remind me of some of Michael Moorcock’s science fantasies, of Tim Powers, and of John Crowley. I sure hope the ending is good.</blockquote>