'Kitt Carver is one of the best diviners in the business at finding destinies for the rich and powerful. When she’s nearly killed, and her regular broker is murdered, it becomes clear that someone has an issue with the last destiny that she found.
'Determined not to let anyone else die, Kitt gathers a mismatched group – including Two Tongue Derna, her childhood friend and now a renowned street duellist; Sulian the Swallowmage, powerful but plagued with intrusive visions of futures; and Donal Klae, Kitt’s one-night stand who was accidentally responsible for her near-murder – and sets off across the Timeless Lands to warn the destiny’s recipient. However, unbeknownst to Kitt, she has her own destiny; one which might spell disaster for everyone.'
Destiny and fate are often used in fantasy stories as a main driving force for heroes and villains alike. Whether it's the chosen one, predicted by prophecy who has to leave home and heed the call to adventure, or the wicked villain who's out to prevent their downfall that fate seems to have engineered the concept of people bound to certain paths in life is a theme that writers explore time and time again. And whilst This is Where the Future Bleeds is all about fate and destiny, it goes about exploring these concepts in wonderfully original ways.
Many generations ago the future was broken. A powerful god used their divine sword to shatter the very concept of fate, breaking the mechanism of destinies finding people; as well as leaving a whole part of the world perpetually frozen in time. For those brave enough, and equipped with magical devices that allow them to exist in this land where time has stopped, the high moors contain some of the most valuable commodities around, destinies. Kitt Carver is a diviner, someone with the magical ability to sense and find destinies, and along with her crew she's able to search the high moors for these valuable pieces of the future and sell them on to the rich and powerful who'll pay good money to secure a grand future for themselves.
Kitt's life is fairly simple despite the constant dangers that going onto the high moors brings, but that all changes when someone tries to kill her. Thankfully, her old friend, Two Tongue Derna, the vicious swordfighter, is around to keep her alive, despite her hatred for Kitt's choice in work. The two of them learn that Kitt isn't the only person involved in the destinies trade who has been killed in town over the last few days, and discover that someone is trying to track down everyone involved with the sale of a particularly powerful destiny that Kitt discovered. Fearing that her life might still be in danger, and not wanting anyone else from getting killed, Kitt sets out to travel across the high moors, something no one has ever done before, and head to the distant city of Derrigsmoot. Along the way she'll be joined by some members of her old team, Derna, the magic wielding Swallowmage, and another diviner who's also been targeted by her would-be assassins. But little does Kitt know that killers are the least dangerous things that she will have to face, and that her actions could end up changing the future for everyone.
This is Where the Future Bleeds is fairly bold, as it drops you into things with little to no background information and makes you keep up with the world as the story progresses. Mike Brooks, who's no stranger to writing stories in complex and fantastical settings, doesn't hold your hand and take things slowly. The very first chapter introduces you to key characters, the concept of the destiny trade, the high moors where time stops, the strange creatures that inhabit it, a number of non-human races, as well as the world that the story takes place in. It would be easy to get bogged down in lore dumps and huge passages of explanatory text, but instead Brooks relies on his evocative storytelling to draw you in and get you invested in the characters, allowing you to instead discover the world as and when things become relevant.
It's this enjoyment of the central characters that made This is Where the Future Bleeds one of those books that I didn't want to put down. As much as I wanted to learn more about the setting and see more of the central mystery it was Kitt that had me coming back, had me reading long beyond the point that I should have put the book down to do something else. Kitt is something of a flawed young woman, someone who's trying her best to get by in a town where she doesn't have many opportunities, nor many friends. She understands why people like Two Tongue Derna might not like the work that she does, how it can be seen as potentially destructive or unfair, yet has to do it because she's someone with very few real opportunities to do much else. Thankfully, she's such a warm, caring person that you almost never think about these parts of her, instead seeing the person who's braving extreme danger to try to save the lives of strangers, who's concerned with the safety of those on her quest with her, and even wants to be liked by people who you can definitely say are much worse people than her; such as Derna.
As the story progresses more and more colourful characters join Kitt on her mission, characters that are absolutely delightful in their weirdness; though they're that much more flawed people than Kitt that they make her look absolutely normal in comparison. Whilst there are a few that I really like, but can't say much about as even their inclusion would spoil aspects of the story, the one I loved the most was Derna. Presented as something of an antagonist in the very first chapter due to her interfering with Kitt's destiny harvesting, she quickly becomes Kitt's fiercest ally and eventual love interest. Watching the evolution of their strained friendship, seeing Kitt realise that she has feelings for Derna, and then her trying to carefully navigate this new awkwardness was absolutely delightful and had me rooting for the two of them to get together.
Kitt and Derna's relationship isn't even the only queer representation in the book, however, as there are multiple queer characters, as well as non-binary and trans characters throughout the book, integrated in ways that made it clear that this was a world where queer identities and expressions were perfectly accepted and normalised. I absolutely adored this aspect. Yes, more books are including queer characters, and queer leads, in ways that weren't done years ago, but having as many as this book does, and with it never being treated as different or other in any way is the kind of representation that I was screaming out for as a frightened, closeted queer child, and I'm so happy that its on the shelves now for anyone to pick up and experience.
My main criticism of the book is that the pacing in the final chapters isn't the best, and it does feel a tiny bit rushed for the final pieces of the plot. This pacing issue felt even worse as it was a book that I was really loving, and so would have been happy to have it go on for longer so that these moments had longer to breathe, had more set-up time, and even something of an epilogue so that we can see where the characters end up and how their lives are different once the main story comes to a close. As it is, it almost felt like Brooks had a hard cut-off where he couldn't take the time to do that, or he had to wrap things up fast due to some circumstances outside of his control. Like I said, I'd have liked to have had more of these characters anyway, so perhaps this feeling is just a reflection of that, and others won't have any issue with the pacing.
This is Where the Future Bleeds is the first thing of Brooks' I've read outside of the Warhammer IP, and I wasn't sure what to expect as that was my only frame of reference for his work; but I'm happy to say not only was I thoroughly impressed and engrossed with the book, but it felt so thematically different that it really highlighted how versatile and talented Brooks is as a writer.
This is Where the Future Bleeds is available now from Titan Books.
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