Gaming industry veteran Marmell (Planeswalker: Agents of Artifice
) offers a breezy adventure starring retired evil overlord Corvis Rebaine. When Corvis decided love was more important than world domination, a shadowy figure known as Audriss took over his plans, which now endanger Corvis’s family. Middle-aged Corvis must strap on his dusty and ill-fitting armor, gather his old allies both mortal and demonic, and save a realm that remembers him only as a malevolent would-be world conqueror. Marmell’s prose is competent, and though his characters seem at times more motivated by the needs of the plot than internal consistency, Corvis is charmingly cunning. The result is an amusing adventure pitting an only somewhat amoral sociopath and his legion of morally compromised friends against an army set on conquest and a genuinely evil villain whose ambitions threaten the world itself. (Mar.)
