by Tucker Lieberman

Some time ago, I discovered Cascade by Rachel A. Rosen.

The sequel, Blight, has awakened.

In the first book, the Earth’s climate has begun to break down, and magic bursts from the planet, entering people. Will the world end? “The world is always ending, for someone,” a wise eco-activist says.

The sequel Blight, has got more demons.

These are the things that, according to Blythe’s experience, kept away a demon: absolutely fucking nothing, if it really wanted to get at you. It would unhinge its jaws and swallow you before you could reach for your gun. It would have claimed your mind long before that. You would walk, smiling, into its rotting arms as it sang your name.

The world collapses by fire, by ice, by violence, by spellcasting, and if it — whatever “it” is — doesn’t get you, it’ll get someone you cared for.

“The first deaths had names, faces, memories attached to them,” but the ones that came after were “cumulative damage, termites in the wood unnoticed until the house collapses,” and then “whole neighbourhoods, small towns, entire ecosystems, tragedy writ too large to enumerate, let alone mourn…other people were shadows, sliding away too fast to register.”

But then, some of us are still alive.

Read the rest on Medium.