Heroes Die

By Matthew Woodring Stover

Here's a confession: I truly love this book. It has everything one would want in an action/fantasy/adventure movie, even funny dialogue, except written out on the page. The reluctant protagonist is an actor called Hari Michaelson and is a futuristic icon of the masses. It's what reality TV could become except no one on the planet he's acting on knows he's from another world acting for billions of people's entertainment.

On this other world, there live fairies with dirty mouths and living in whore-houses, a new God who Hari has pissed off, along with plenty of other folk. There are other actors besides Hari who go so far as to get reconstruction surgeries to make themselves look elvish or whatever other sorts of fantastical creatures residing on this other world so they can try to make a living as an actor in this strange new development of the business. I don't want to get too in depth on this, but it is quite worth the read, especially since it's continued on as a series; but so far this is the best of the three, although if this one does whet the appetite, the sequel is just as violent and humorous as the first.