Lee Battersby – författare

Marius dos Hellespont and his apprentice, Gerd, are professional looters of battlefields. When they stumble upon the corpse of the King of Scorby and Gerd is killed, Marius is mistaken for the monarch by one of the dead soldiers and is transported down to the Kingdom of the Dead.

Just like the living citizens, the dead need a King—after all, the King is God’s representative, and someone needs to remind God where they are.

And so it comes to pass that Marius is banished to the surface with one message: if he wants to recover his life he must find the dead a King. Which he fully intends to do.

Just as soon as he stops running away.

“Wry, absurdist, and pleasantly cynical, Battersby’s [novel] will appeal to fans of Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora and Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Find the dead a King? Tick. Save himself from a fate worse than death? Tick. Win the love of his life? Tick. Live happily ever after…ah.

Having achived so much, Marius don Hellespont was finding life just a little boring. But now something, or maybe someone, has stopped the dead from, well, dying.

So wouldn’t you know it, it’s up to Marius, incorrigible sidekick Gerd, and Gerd’s not-dead-enough Granny, to journey across the continent and put the marching dead back in the afterlife, where they belong.

“Great characters, story, pace, writing.” —British Fantasy Society