Books

_Profiteer_
_Partisan_
_Revolutionary_ (The Takeover Trilogy)
_Forests of the Night_
_Broken Crescent_

All by S. Andrew Swann.

_The Gangster Worlds_, Steve Perry and Dal Perry finishing Alan Bunch's series

_The Faceless Ones_ (Book 3 of Skulduggery Pleasant), Derek Landry

_Expecting Someone Taller_, Tom Holt

In reverse order:

Holt does comedic fantasy, in a way which I find hit or miss. This is a hit: random mundane wanders into posession of the Ring of the Nibelungen, awful chaos follows. Generally light for a piece that incorporates a Gotterdammerung.

Skulduggery Pleasant is the working name of a skeletal detective, generally employed by the forces of good to find out what's going on with the forces of evil. He's not actually the star of the series; that spot is reserved for his teenage sidekick/apprentice Valkyrie Cain, who is just starting to come into her own power. In this episode, the fate of the world (interdimensional invasion of Cthuloid entities version) is at stake again. Probably a good intro to the genre before melting young readers' brains.

Alan Bunch died while working on the fifth book in a series about the exploits of a space-opera-universe Leverage crew calling themselves Star Risk, Ltd. Steve Perry and his (son?) Dal finish the book and the series while staying reasonably true to the universe and very close to the original tenor. I don't know whethere it was boredom or humor that sparked bad-guy names such as Neves, Enin, Net and presumably Xis, Thgie and Evif.

So I read an S. Andrew Swann book fairly recently, which prompted a dig into other available works: to with, a trilogy discussing the downfall of the Interstellar Confederacy after overly-Machiavellian political maneuverings collapsed; a predecessor in that universe establishing the exciting Earth-based career of Nohar Rajasthan, ace private eye and genetically modified tiger-man who may go on to become founding hero of a different planet; and an unrelated fantasy that pulls a hacker from our universe into a magical land where magic is code... but does it better and more convincingly than the other people who have done that trope.

Books

_Profiteer_
_Partisan_
_Revolutionary_ (The Takeover Trilogy)
_Forests of the Night_
_Broken Crescent_

All by S. Andrew Swann.

_The Gangster Worlds_, Steve Perry and Dal Perry finishing Alan Bunch's series

_The Faceless Ones_ (Book 3 of Skulduggery Pleasant), Derek Landry

_Expecting Someone Taller_, Tom Holt

In reverse order:

Holt does comedic fantasy, in a way which I find hit or miss. This is a hit: random mundane wanders into posession of the Ring of the Nibelungen, awful chaos follows. Generally light for a piece that incorporates a Gotterdammerung.

Skulduggery Pleasant is the working name of a skeletal detective, generally employed by the forces of good to find out what's going on with the forces of evil. He's not actually the star of the series; that spot is reserved for his teenage sidekick/apprentice Valkyrie Cain, who is just starting to come into her own power. In this episode, the fate of the world (interdimensional invasion of Cthuloid entities version) is at stake again. Probably a good intro to the genre before melting young readers' brains.

Alan Bunch died while working on the fifth book in a series about the exploits of a space-opera-universe Leverage crew calling themselves Star Risk, Ltd. Steve Perry and his (son?) Dal finish the book and the series while staying reasonably true to the universe and very close to the original tenor. I don't know whethere it was boredom or humor that sparked bad-guy names such as Neves, Enin, Net and presumably Xis, Thgie and Evif.

So I read an S. Andrew Swann book fairly recently, which prompted a dig into other available works: to with, a trilogy discussing the downfall of the Interstellar Confederacy after overly-Machiavellian political maneuverings collapsed; a predecessor in that universe establishing the exciting Earth-based career of Nohar Rajasthan, ace private eye and genetically modified tiger-man who may go on to become founding hero of a different planet; and an unrelated fantasy that pulls a hacker from our universe into a magical land where magic is code... but does it better and more convincingly than the other people who have done that trope.