When the gods refuse to die, mortals have two choices: bow or break. Victory and Death follows the ones reckless enough to try something far more thrilling—fight back.
Victory and Death opens on a war that’s been raging for centuries, covering exhausted soldiers, frightened kings, and a general who is finally done bleeding for immortal tyrants.
Author Russel Frans drops readers into a multiverse of twenty-seven worlds locked in the Planewars, ruled by immortal Wizard-Kings who feel uncomfortably close to gods. The prologue sets the tone in a single icy meeting, as King Horrin reminds the assembled nobles exactly what they are up against: “The Arch-Magus is an immortal Wizard-King; he is a god. One does not overthrow a god, gentlemen.” That line hangs over the entire book like a sentence that has not quite been carried out yet.
At the center of the story is General Artorus Vallon of the Fifth Planar Army. He is not a swaggering chosen one; he is a career soldier who has seen far too many bodies on far too many battlefields. The opening chapter on Learden, with its three suns and ashen killing fields, shows us a man who refuses to go numb no matter how much death he has to walk through.
Kneeling over a fallen boy, Artorus whispers a clumsy prayer he has borrowed from his sister: “It was a prayer he’d heard his sister use for the living; he wasn’t entirely sure if it was appropriate for the dead. But this maladroit prayer from this impious general would have to suffice.” That moment sums him up quite well. He is not certain, not holy, not comfortable, but he is trying anyway.
One of the real strengths here is how grounded the writing feels. The dialogue is sharp and believable, even when the characters are discussing immortal Wizards or the logistics of cross-planar war. Battle scenes feel tactical and brutal rather than splashy for their own sake. You can feel the weight of armor, the drag of gravity on different worlds, the sting of ash in a soldier’s lungs. When goblin wolf riders break through a line or an ogre charges the siege engines, the horror sits right alongside the strategy rather than being swallowed by it.
The worldbuilding is rich in a way that rewards attention without ever turning into a textbook. Frans gives us hand-drawn maps, scribbled with planes, gates, and borders, and they are not just pretty extras. They feel like artifacts from within the story, the sort of charts a harried Sage or general might have drawn in the margins. It is absolutely the sort of map you flip back to every few pages, trying to track where the armies are heading next and how the worlds knit together.
Underneath the siege engines and Wizard fire, the book is obsessed with power, loyalty, and the cost of obedience. Artorus has spent his life fighting for Lord Brakken the War Maker. Duke Garreth Jacob and the other nobles on Hael live in the shadow of the Arch-Magus Vith.
Everyone is supposed to accept that Wizards rule forever. Yet Garreth cannot quite stop himself from saying what no one else will: “Gentlemen, there has to be a way… There must be a way to destroy him.” The tension between “no one overthrows a god” and “there has to be a way” drives the narrative, both politically and personally.
What really makes this book sing is how much care it takes with the human pieces inside the giant war machine. Frans gives us friendships, mentorships, betrayals, and quiet moments of doubt that feel as consequential as the big set-piece battles. The story never forgets that every anonymous corpse had a name, even when the survivors do not know it.
Victory and Death is a strong, emotionally resonant opening to a saga that clearly has a lot more to say about war, faith, rebellion, and what mortals owe to those who claim to rule them forever.
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