Review: West of the World

July 14, 2026Leave a comment

Title: West of the World
Author: Mike Shel
Pages: 450
Series: The Chronicles of Jerebad Madder #1
Release: August 25, 2026

Set two hundred years after the conclusion of his phenomenal Iconoclasts Trilogy, West of the World seamlessly expands the boundaries of Shel’s dark and dangerous fantasy world. Jerebad Madder, a gunslinging dirt-witch of no particular renown, tracks a demon across the western expanse of Nethe Mundis, the New World, in a story that evokes Stephen King’s The Gunslinger while forging its own strange and sorcerous path.

This fantastical frontier tale features a snake-oil salesman with a complicated past, a sweeping romance born from a calamitous meet-cute, and a troubled hero battling demons both internal and external alongside a succession of unlikely allies. Shel delivers elegant prose, fascinating lore, and intricate worldbuilding in a story that is dark and gritty but still full of heart.

West of the World serves as both an accessible entry point for newcomers and a rewarding expansion for longtime fans. It cements Shel’s place as one of the best fantasy writers working today and will hopefully bring many more readers to his work.

★★★★½

My thanks to the author for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Idols Fall

April 5, 2021October 11, 20211 Comment

Title: Idols Fall (April 21, 2021)
Author: Mike Shel
Pages: 614
Series: Iconoclasts #3 (Series Tracker)

Shel is a truly gifted storyteller and he’s woven a trilogy-capping book that is dark, twisty, funny, wholly satisfying, and bloody brilliant…major emphasis on the “bloody.”

Sometimes the third book in a series starts to feel stale if it’s not charting new ground, but Shel has injected enough fresh energy into this story and its characters to pay off this final adventure splendidly. There’s so much fantasy goodness packed into the pages here: demonic possession, talking swords, beasts from hell, false gods, geopolitical conflict, cults, and of course, a dangerous expedition into an ancient cursed ruin. It’s all rendered beautifully on the page by Shel’s delightful prose. Bump this trilogy up your TBRs folks. This is a masterful conclusion to an outstanding series.

★★★★½

My thanks to the author for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Sin Eater

June 30, 20191 Comment

Title: Sin Eater (2019)
Author: Mike Shel
Pages: 574
Series: Iconoclasts #2 (Series Tracker)

Sin Eater shook me from the book rut I’d been in for months. I was struggling, in particular, with Book #2s in series that could not recapture the magic of their predecessors. Although I wasn’t as enthralled with this one as I was with Aching God, I still flew through it and enjoyed the ride.

Shel introduces several new characters for Auric’s team and although the stakes are higher this time around, the story is not able to inject an appropriate level of urgency into the proceedings. Adventure/questing elements from the first book seem dampened this time around and the new POVs prove a bit flat.

Luckily, the worldbuilding remains strong, the writing flows nicely, and the ending is satisfying enough to leave me excited for what’s to come in the third and final book in the trilogy.

★★★½ out of 5

Review: Aching God

May 14, 2018May 14, 20181 Comment

Title: Aching God (2018)
Author: Mike Shel
Pages: 598
Series: Iconoclasts #1 (Series Tracker)

Aching God appeared on my radar after seeing several glowing reviews on the r/fantasy subreddit. Now, I don’t always connect with books that r/fantasy fawns over, but this was certainly not the case with Aching God, which is a thoroughly engrossing debut novel that I enjoyed immensely.

The book follows Auric Manteo, a retired mercenary, of sorts, who leads an expedition to return a cursed gem to the haunted temple from whence it came. It’s a straightforward story, but told in expert fashion. The writing is superb, which is not always a given in self-published fare. When a character referred to something as an “ensorcelled receptacle,” I knew that this was the right book for me. I expected a fairly simplistic dungeon quest tale, but it’s really so much more than that. Author Mike Shel has built out the world of Hanifax in rich detail and explores a great deal of the map with compelling encounters and fully-formed characters.

This is for anyone who enjoys dark fantasy and a well-told story. It’s certainly one of my favorite books of 2018 and I will be eagerly awaiting the next installment in the series, as Aching God builds a very solid foundation from which to jump off from. It feels like sword and sorcery Indiana Jones — and I’m very here for that.

★★★★¼ out of 5