Because I enjoyed Throne of Bones, Vox Day was kind enough to send me a copy of his new release, The Wardog’s Coin, which consists of two shorter stories set in the same universe.

I enjoyed them both, in different ways. The title story is more immediately accessible, being (so far as I can tell – I may have missed some subtext) a pretty straight war story about human mercenaries fighting an army of goblins and orcs for an elven king. It’s a rousing and tragic tale of men and war.

The second story, “Qalabi Dawn,” is more challenging but interesting on a couple of levels. It’s the story of a desert race of rational creatures who seem to be a cross between humans and big cats. A ruthless ruler conquers all the prides in order to defend his race as a whole from human aggression. Aside from offering a kind of metaphor for the place of Islam in the world, this story deals very successfully with a challenge I’ve tried to tackle myself in the past, with (I fear) debatable success – the conception and communication of a wholly alien ethos, imagining what creatures who really thought differently from us might be like.

Well done. Recommended.