Quality fantasy romp with a side of anti-capitalist fury
Mike Brooks is a writer that rarely disappoints. He's one of the most consistently solid writers of Warhammer: 40,000 fiction for The Black Library. He's written hugely entertaining caper-tinged space opera in the form of the Keiko series. And his Godking Chronicles trilogy was one of the very best epic fantasies of recent years. That record of consistency is happily continued here with This Is Where The Future Bleeds; a funny, entertaining standalone romp that's also a pretty effective satire of late-stage capitalism and its response to climate change.
The novel is set in a world where time has literally been stabbed: a god tried to murder the future and only partially succeeded. On the moor where the assault happened, time is frozen and the wound where the future was stabbed drips crystallised destinies as it bleeds. Hold a destiny and concentrate on it and you absorb the future it contains. The rest of the world (a reasonably standard fantasy secondary world which is dominated by humans but also has other sentient races) continues on relatively normally for centuries after the attempted temporal murder, except a new and lucrative trade in destinies has sprung up. Diviners, protected from the frozen moment by chronomancy and dodging the risk of rather nasty temporal monsters, lead expeditions to find raw destinies on the high moor. Soothsayers read the destiny and understand what future it promises. And, of course, brokers sell the destinies to the highest bidders.
The story opens in media res with our protagonist (and diviner), Kitt Carver, mid-expedition, looking for a lucrative destiny to sell to her broker. The dangers of the moor and her profession are quickly established: Kitt finds a destiny but is then immediately attacked by the temporal monsters mentioned above. She miraculously escapes that attack but runs into another after she comes down off the moor, by a street gang with violent moral objections to the destinies trade. Negotiating her way out of that leaves her alive but destiny-less. Just as she is coming out of her funk at that loss of income, Kitt discovers her broker has been murdered and is herself assaulted in the street. It quickly becomes clear that someone powerful has an issue with one of the destinies Kitt has recently sold, and the people who bought it are likely in danger. Thus begins a headlong dash to warn the buyers, that kicks off the plot in earnest.
This book is, before anything else, a boatload of fun. There is good quality action sequences, appealingly shitty villains, and a likeable main cast that is nevertheless not remotely perfect. The tone is irreverent and amusing without descending into Whedonesque quippyness where the snark is a barrier between the reader and the characters. There are well placed, effective jokes that I'm sure will nevertheless irritate some readers. Brooks winks at the fourth wall without quite breaking it, drawing on pop culture references that are funny now but may well date quite badly. One of my favourites is an early reference to a character named “Definitely Human Dirk Hamley, whose nickname tended to prompt questions already answered by his nickname.” This clear reference to the "My ‘Not involved in human trafficking’ T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt” meme of the past decade may well break immersion for some readers, but for two reasons, I don't object to this and other jokes like it throughout the book. First, it actually made me laugh. Second—and perhaps more generalisable—the reference to the real world reinforces that the destinies trade in the book is a pretty clear satire of the fossil fuel industry, specifically the capitalist political economy more generally in ours.
Destinies are valued based on how appealing or useful the future they will push their holders towards are. So the poor can't afford any beneficial destinies at all, the middle class are limited to extremely moderate helpful ones, and the rich can buy huge, positive destinies that significantly tilt the future in their favour, allowing them to get richer, buy more destinies, and tip the scales even more towards them. They are literally buying the futures of others to benefit themselves and entrench their privilege. The reference to extractive capitalism is already clear, but becomes moreso when a number of doomsday warnings from seers appear—perhaps the future is not just bleeding but bleeding out. The future potentially dying is of course a problem for everyone, but those that benefit from the status quo both downplay the risk and suggest that, even if it is happening, there's nothing we can do about it, so might as well enjoy their privilege while they can. Those at the top of this pyramid are treated with pretty uncomplicated contempt by the narrative, but it also makes the point that there are a lot of people involved in the trade whose day-to-day lives depend on it and who are just making a living rather than getting rich. It doesn't excuse their complacency, but I think Brooks does understand it: inertia is a hell of a thing to shift if those with the most power are unwilling to contribute.
This level of reasonably on-the-nose satire only works because, as mentioned above, the whole thing is a lot of fun and the cast is appealing. Kitt, the main character, is a slightly reluctant hero. Decent and hardworking, but also out primarily for herself and her friends rather than actively trying to save the world. Her old friend, Derna, is menacing and potentially positioned as an antagonist, but as the narrative goes on, it's clear there's more going on than that. Yes, she is dangerous and remains so, but it's slowly revealed that she is clearly neurodiverse and holds a reliable moral compass and lack of nuance that make neurotypical folks uncomfortable, which is where at least part of the sense of menace comes from. The rest of the support cast is well drawn, with the partial exception of a drunk seer that falls a bit flat. I get what the point of the character is for, and it's not badly written—a seer driven mad by thousands of voices of the fractured future instead of just the one a healthy timeline would have—but it's the closest the book comes to fantasy cliché and I'm not sure it quite works as intended.
The setting is also, in a low key way, extremely queer. Kitt and Derna are both bisexual; Kitt's sibling is enby; there's a binary trans character later in the book. All this is entirely taken in stride by the setting and its characters (including the unsympathetic ones). A number of axes of oppression are explored in the book, but sexuality and gender identity aren't: it's just not a big deal. I do like that we can be presented with a queernorm world that's not remotely cozy and is in fact quite crappy in a lot of other ways; queernorm doesn't have to (and shouldn't) always mean utopia.
Put all this together and you have a very good quality fantasy romp that has rather more to say than might appear on the surface. This Is Where The Future Bleeds won't change the world, but it might make you want to.
Highlights:
- A fun and funny standalone fantasy
- Queernorm without being cozy
- Effective satire of capitalism and climate inertia
Nerd coefficient: 7/10.
Reference: Brooks, Mike. This Is Where The Future Bleeds [Titan, 2026].
POSTED BY: Eddie Clark. Professional nerd by day, amateur nerd by night. @dreddieclark.bsky.social
