Game of Cages

Connolly fulfills and sustains the promise of his 2009 rural noir debut, Child of Fire, with this thoughtful Lovecraftian sequel. Catherine Little works for the Twenty Palace Society, a group of lethal sorcerers committed to controlling all the universe's supernatural entities and magic. She contacts ex-convict Ray Lilly at his mundane supermarket job and recruits him to assist her with an emergency situation. Ray's actions are supposed to be limited to assisting his assigned peer, but an interdimensional predator has escaped and the society needs all the help it can get. Connolly doesn't shy away from tackling big philosophical issues—whether good ends justify evil means, how many civilian deaths can be justified in the pursuit of creatures that can destroy the world—amid gory action scenes and plenty of rapid-fire sardonic dialogue. (Sept.)