Reading any of Fletcher’s Manifest Delusions books is like reading the realities imagined by a thousand metal albums. If you giggle uncontrollably at ridiculous arpeggios, if you never heard a double kick you didn’t love, if every spent a moment trying to convince your friends of the fundamental similarities between Mozart and Opeth, this is the series for you. (Anyone else probably would [probably should] hate it.)

Swarm and Steel is a separate story from the story of Beyond Redemption and The Mirror’s Truth, but it finds Fletcher playing in the most actualized version of the sandbox he created in those first two novels. His insane world has never felt as real as it felt here, and the stories he weaved as never been as fun. Sick. Disgusting. Repugnant. Immoral. Blasphemous. I loved every twisted page.

I sincerely hope he keeps this sandbox open after he finishes the Beyond Redemption trilogy. As he proved here, Fletcher can play in this world in just about any way he can imagine.