Age of Misrule: World’s End

By Mark Chadbourn
Pyr, $15.98, 419 pages

Welcome to the apocalypse, brought on by the incursion of the Fomorii into England. The Fomorii are dark faerie legends and myths turned real in a nasty fashion. World’s End follows Jack Churchill and Ruth Gallagher as they find themselves thrust into the center of the battle to prevent the Fomorii from overrunning the world. To do so, Church (as Jack is called) and Ruth must find four mythic talismans which will somehow enable them to defeat the Fomorii…and time is running out.

There are some paint-by-numbers quest aspects to World’s End, complete with a mysterious guide who blatantly refuses to impart his knowledge. There are moments of info-dumping. There are moments of cliché. The rest of World’s End is excitement, however, and within the confines of a quest fantasy, Mark Chadbourn offers a fair number of surprises and thrills.

World’s End is an impressive opening volume to the Age of Misrule, trilogy and the conclusion is such that everything that readers would have assumed about the novel series is shockingly thrown out the window. While not perfect, World’s End is an impressive achievement.

Reviewed by Joe Sherry