The World of M is an Urban Fantasy novel by Stevie Barry. It’s the fourth book in The M Universe.
The War of M was seemingly won, but at a terrible cost. With millions dead, and the Northern Hemisphere a wasteland, rebuilding will take decades.
What most people don't know is that the war isn’t over. Thorvald might be dead, but the creature that created him remains alive and well..and it’s determined to cross the gap between the Void and Earth. Earth, however, is not the only dimension it threatens, and humanity has gained itself some rather strange allies. Airships from another world bring plenty of backup(and with them, hope), while ancient gods wake out of millennia-long naps.
This novel provides examples of:
- Alien Blood: The Angel and its minions bleed black.
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant: All the ancient gods wake up to join the fight against the Angel.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Ratiri's always been capable of holding his own in a fight, but hand him a sword and point him at the Angel's minions, and he's fucking terrifying.
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The battle against the Angel stretches over multiple chapters.
- Big Damn Heroes: The airships are seen as these by the people they aid on the ground; their turning up helps turn the tide of the battle.
- Cavalry of the Dead: Aelis and her people and, in an odd way, the Memories. They turn up en masse at the battle in the Arctic.
- Child Soldiers: Technically, all the crew on the O.S. Life Boat become child soldiers during this battle, though they do so from within the relative safety of an airship.
- Cool Airship: A lot of them, all from the Other. Being magical in nature, they look like flying tall ships, but have some surprisingly advanced weaponry.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Lorna finds Azarael surprisingly comforting at the moment of her death.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: From the Angel’s perspective, Sharley is this. Sharley was born a Half-Human Hybrid, turned into a deity when her body died, and worked her way up to being a full-on Reality Warper.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Ambriel, also known as the Angel: the one who gave Thorvald his plague and his immortality, which in turn set off the Obliteration and the War a thousand years later.
- Green Thumb: All the green thumbs, including Pat, are extremely useful for the communities the ships aid.
- Handicapped Badass: Poor Lorna might have had her leg and her shoulder healed, but nothing can be done about her eye or the Memory-wounds on her back. Jary tells her that while the eye will hopefully improve with time, she'll never have proper vision from it again. This doesn't stop her taking part in the big battle in the North Pole.
- Healing Hands: Jary, being the Other’s resident deity of Life, has these. Ratiri still does as well, thanks to Kali, though the ability is taken from him after the battle.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Von Rached, of all people. Lorna is doomed to die (she has something she needs to do in the afterlife), but he can resurrect her if he dies himself. Helps that he actually wants to die, though he makes sure he does it in a suitably appropriate way for someone with his ego.
- Humans Are Good: The Migration and Thorvald's war basically shattered society, yet in most places people have tried to do their best to maintain peace. This is helped quite a bit by the airships and their supplies.
- Humanoid Abomination: Sharley is an odd case in that while yes, she’s an abomination, she’s not an evil one. The Memories are a much straighter example.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone has this reaction when the Memories turn up. The Memories exude a malice so powerful that even the deities are creeped out by them.
- Now What?: A problem for a whole lot of the survivors of the War, and even more so for the humans who survived the battle against the Angel.
- Only Sane Man: Azarael certainly feels like he is. A lot of his fellow deities regard him more like a downplayed Eeyore, given how pessimistic he naturally is.
- Orphean Rescue: Von Rached's whole intent behind his death. Though unlike Orpheus, he means to succeed.
- Reality Warper: Sharley eventually becomes master of this in a big, big way.
- Redemption Equals Death: Von Rached, whose last act is an Orphean Rescue of Lorna. She really does not know what to do with that emotionally.
- Resurrection Sickness: Downplayed, but Lorna has some definite issues when she comes back from the dead, starting with memory problems. She takes to writing things down.
- Sanity Slippage: Both Sharley and Lorna undergo this, to varying degrees. Lorna died and came back, while Sharley exercised her Reality Warper power for the first time.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: The bulk of Jary and Azarael's communication.
- There Is No Kill Like Over Kill: Let's see, we've got: the strongest Gifted on the planet; the old gods who've slept for over a thousand years; all three deities from the Other, one of whom is Death (and their support staff); an army of two million zombies, and oh yeah, the Memories, and they're all set against the Angel and its minions.
- Time Master: Sharley slowly becomes this over the course of the story.
- Undead Child: Children, actually. An entire army of child-zombies from the Other.
- World Half Full: Although the War did huge amounts of damage, the world is on its way to slowly repairing itself before the battle in the Arctic.
