The Fall

I started The Fall with the expectations of someone who loves a good dungeon crawl, and I have to say Mizgailo knows how to build tension when his adventurers are in danger. The problem is that this tension is constantly interrupted.

The prologue with Old Rose and her cats is an effective piece of horror atmosphere. We have a woman kept alive by the curse that binds her animals (poor things!), who finally finds her daughter among the undead. When Lilith starts singing the "March of the Undead" outside the barricaded tavern... well, that was good. It made me feel something.

But then, unfortunately, the author feels the need to explain exactly how every mechanic, every artifact, every spirit works. He holds my hand!

The group of adventurers is well put together and less conventional than you might expect: the satyr official with his spirits, the gruff dwarf, an assassin, the elf who develops magical olfactory abilities. Each has a clear role in the party, but I rarely saw them as people — they feel more like pieces on a chessboard.

Now, Lycah, the werewolf healer, is the exception. She is a woman who has lost children, a husband, and now discovers that the curse [SPOILER!]. When she scratches the wall, you feel what she feels. It's a shame that even she ends up buried under exposition about the mechanics of her magic.

As book two of a saga, The Fall suffers from a structural problem: there isn't enough setup for those who haven't read the first volume, but there's too much exposition for those who have. And the final cliffhanger arrives so abruptly that it feels like the author realized the book was getting too long and hit the NOS.

For those nostalgic for D&D sessions, there's a lot to appreciate.