Daniel Black series by E. William Brown

A friend pushed me to read "Perilous Waif" by E. William Brown some time past. I enjoyed it and have been eagerly awaiting the sequel. In the meantime, I finally broke down and replaced by long-dead Kobo with a Kindle. I decided to fill it up with a few books and got Brown's "Daniel Black" series (only available in eBook).

There's four books in the series so far: Fimbulwinter, Black Coven, Extermination, and Thrall. Rather than go into them in detail, I'll just give my overall impressions as I binge-read them.

The Daniel Black series is about Daniel Black, a software engineer of 21st century Earth who has a spectacularly-bad run of luck. He's recruited by the goddess Hectate to journey to an alternate Earth to save the last of Hectate's worshippers, a sexy murder witch and her equally-sexy hearth witch lover.

As part of the bargain, Daniel is dragged through a stream of chaos that lets him pick up sorcerous powers. Daniel, a former devotee of roleplaying games and video games, munchkins the unholy hell out of this offer, picking up magics around earth, force, flesh, and even mana (the stuff of magic itself). Armed with 21st century knowledge and arcane power, Daniel then proceeds to kick ass in an alternate Earth version of Skandinavia where Ragnarok is starting.

Brown has a gift for really fun narrative. He keeps the story moving and writes entertainingly-intelligent characters. He likes to surround Daniel with a wide variety of sexy and deadly women. Many of them are barely-legal, but his narrative is quick to point out that's relative given the setting. There's lots of polyamourous sex, gratuitous sex, and just... uh... sex. There's also tons of the old ultraviolence mixed in for fun.

Daniel Black's 21st Century American morals and views are tackled in an interesting way through Brown's filter of this alternate Earth. You almost have to pity the first monster that comes across his magical flamethrower. Oops. Spoiler.

The series is a really fun read overall. I have to say, I can't wait for book five in the series. Brown has gone dark since the pandemic, by all accounts. I hope he's okay and hunkered down to crank out more books.