"Hope kills faster than steel."

"Red Death" · a novel by Claudia Laforet

Lazor only wants to die. A poison-scarred half-blood they call monster, mongrel, abomination — and perhaps they are right. After leaving a trail of blood across ruined kingdoms, two women save his life against his will and drag him back into a cruel world where violence, hatred and faith walk hand in hand: cursed forests, villages reeking of fear, cities where the Inquisition keeps its pyres burning. Alongside Mircea, a Walker with a sharp tongue and sharper secrets, and Éomar, a renegade paladin, Lazor must face fanatic warriors, necromancers and the ghosts of the wars he himself helped bleed dry.

A brutal, desperately human novel about guilt, fractured identity and love as an open wound — where redemption is a lie the weak tell themselves before dying, violence is never heroic, and the true monsters wear your face.

For readers of Joe Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence, with the tone of Berserk. Cover art by Raúl Allén (Marvel, DC, Valiant).