Awakening in a speeding ambulance, with the scream of its undulating siren ripping your brain apart, is not a pleasant experience. It becomes even less so when you realize you’re in a body bag zipped up tight and you can’t move. Trapped in suffocating darkness, with the rubberized canvas pulling at your flesh, you realize that if this is death, eternity in a grave will be hell itself.
And so begins A Gathering Evil, Michael Stackpole’s first novel in what was to become the Fiddleback trilogy. Be warned spoilers follow!
Plot Summary
As quoted from above, A Gathering Evil starts in the most dire of circumstances, but then moves into a classic romp through a vibrant post-depression world. It is through the eyes of the protagonist, Tycho Caine (a man who knows nothing of his past, not even if Tycho is his real name), that we learn about this alternate 2010s; from the depths of the Eclipse (the name given to the massive solar panel array that now covers most of downtown Pheonix) all the way to the top of the most prestigious of corporate towers. Much like Dark Conspiracy itself, the story is one of fighting back against an unknowable enemy, a universe where it seems it is always left to a collection of misfits and social outcasts to make right when others can, or will, not.
