Hellmaw: Your World Is Doomed

This is the first novel of a linked fantasy setting to be explored by multiple authors. The world-building centers on a war among the Araurra daemons and various subterfuges spilling over into our world, with daemon factions using humans as puppets and pawns. Greenwood is a prolific author, perhaps most famous for creating the D&D Forgotten Realms setting, and generally an effective, genuinely humorous writer%E2%80%94when reined in by an editor. This book is put out by Greenwood's own new publishing consortium, and is consequently unreadable, descending into authorial excess with gleeful abandon. Its three protagonists, Shanklin Appledar, Nast Lanchester, and Shannon Chainsmith, are gross caricatures, leaving little on which to hang the thin story of supernatural pseudo-Machiavellian conflict. Matters are not helped by the book's occasional racism, and Chainsmith's story line is mostly composed of body-shaming, misogyny, and ongoing mind control and rape. There's hope that this first novel is a hiccup as the series finds its footing, but Greenwood's multitude of fans will most likely buy this book regardless. (Nov.)