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BayMar Publishing
Service Provider
Manifest Destiny

Adult; General Fiction (including literary and historical); (Market)

A glorious future awaits the unholy alliance between Norne the Machiavellian ice witch and Chaos the demon-spawned wild man. First, Tartarus. Next, the Universe.
Reviews
“Blood and guts gorily sprayed everywhere,” Baynes writes in the early pages of this darkly comic fable of power and powers, royalty and space empires, and a pair of misfit strivers, endowed with great abilities, who prove all too happy to spray blood and guts about as they seize their place in the universe. Antiheroes Norne and Chaos, a princess of the Arcosians and a nine-foot-tall telepathic man-child, meet just before Norne is slated to meet her betrothed, a prince of Tartarus who expects instead to marry her “hottie” sister. But her new friend Chaos lives up to his name, and soon this surprising duo are claiming the kingdom for themselves, facing all the complications—and bloodshed—a coup involves, the adventure powered along by their crisp, playful comic dialogue.

Structured as an epic step-by-step guide to claim and expand an empire, Manifest Destiny blends fantasy, science-fiction, satire, and cheerful violence while still offering rich worldbuilding and an intriguing magic system—and even risking a slow start to the novel with several explanatory prefaces. The satire targets assumptions about who deserves power, both the social and magical kinds, as Norne and Chaos draw on their innate (even “insane and completely unfair”) magical abilities to steamroll their opponents—and occasionally face off against each other. Baynes invites readers to wrestle with the question of whether they support the duo’s efforts even as the story encourages us to cheer for their slowly developing bond.

Of course, the stagnant empires they challenge aren’t sympathetic, either, and with descriptions of rulers who associate their “fair skin” with a “Master Race” Baynes parodies the worst thematic underpinnings of classic fantasy. Scenes run long and chatty, and the prose could benefit from tightening, but fantasy readers interested in the hard work of minion acquisition, keeping the military in line, and the question of whether power games can help the poor and oppressed will find much dark fun here.

Takeaway: A cheerfully bloody comic fantasy concerned with questions of power and powers.

Great for fans of: Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, Piers Anthony’s Bio of a Space Tyrant series.

Production grades
Cover: B-
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: B-
Marketing copy: B

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