THE GRIM COMPANY

A killer fantasy trilogy, a fantasy full of flawed heroes that will appeal to readers of Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch among others.

Five hundred years ago, the world was sundered in the celestial Godswar. Seeking to throw off the shackles of the deities who created them, a cabal of mages and ancient loremasters rose up and made war upon the Gods. Though they won out, it was at a great cost: the ensuing cataclysm brought forth the Age of Ruin to the world, and the fallout of the disaster tainted the mages themselves.

Five hundred years later, the world limps on, fraying around the edges, seemingly winding down to an inevitable end. Across a landscape still blighted by the death of the Gods, dystopian city states have arisen, each presided over by one of the Magelords who first made war. Now corrupted, near-immortal, and far too powerful, those wizards who once sought to free the world from its masters have become the masters themselves: draconian and calculating, they make war upon each other, while the helpless populace limp on from day to day.

Into this blighted world, steps Davarus Cole, a hero - or, perhaps, a boy too young to really understand what being a hero means. Obsessed with notions of heroism and adventuring, Cole burns to do great deeds, while the men around him jeer at his boyish stupidity. One night, attempting to rescue a local drunk being harried by the City Watch, Cole draws his blade, attempts to play the part of the hero - but quickly finds himself on the floor, with a knife to his throat. Rescued by the interference of the ageing outcast barbarian, Brodar Kayne, and his sworn-brother, the sociopathic Jerek the Wolf, Cole quickly finds himself shanghaied and sent away from the city, where the world still groans from the ancient cataclysm, where the corpses of Gods lie deep beneath the bedrock, leaking wild, uncontrolled magic into the world, and where hellish abominations, unchecked by the power of the Gods, find their way into the realms of men and wreak waves of destruction.

With the blackest sense of humour, THE GRIM COMPANY revels in the dark side, peopled by a grotesquerie of old men and anti-heroes: Eremul the Half-Mage, a sickly loremaster whose legs were amputated by the Magelord's decree; Three Fingers, a convicted rapist whose every appendage has been shortened by half, but who is, perhaps, the closest friend Davarus Cole will ever find; Barandas, the patient and morally-grey leader of the Magelord's elite guard, whose heart is kept pumping only at his master's whim; Yllandris, a sorceress from the frozen north, whose inability to massacre the children of her enemies might prove her downfall; and many more.


Luke Johnson is 30 years old, lives in Bath in the UK - but was headhunted by Bioware, one of the big American computer role-playing-game companies, when he was in his early twenties, after a module he designed as a hobby for their game, Neverwinter Nights, was downloaded by players 250,000 times. Since then, he has worked on one of their lead titles as designer and scripter, MYSTERIES OF WESTGATE, and is now lead designer at a company that broke away from Bioware, Ossian Studios, whose game, THE SHADOW SUN, is released this summer, and forecast 250,000+ sales.