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Brussels, 1892. In a second hand book stall, a professor finds the leather-bound manuscript of High Life in Verdopolis, a novella set in the fantastic kingdom of Glass Town imagined by a teenage Charlotte Brontë. How the manuscript made its mysterious journey to the Belgian bookstall remains unknown.
Rehoboth Beach, 2009. Browsing the shelves at Atlantic Books, I find Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal by the Brontës. I’ve read and loved Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but the discovery that the Brontë siblings also developed their own shared fantasy world is new and thrilling. I buy the brick-sized book immediately.
Baltimore, 2019. I buy the first volume of Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans at Atomic Books. Reading it, the words of the Grandmaster hit me like a lightning bolt to the brain: “From Angria to Glass Town, all has been prepared for your coming…”
Die, Die, my darlings: in 1991, six British teenagers disappear into a mysterious role-playing game. Five of them return, unable to say anything about where they’ve been or what happened to them. Decades later, haunted by the horrors of their youth and the disappointments of middle age, the friends are reunited after the reappearance of their lost compatriot’s magic die. Suddenly, they are pulled back to the fantasy world of Die and the adventure they thought they left behind. The great game continues. [Read on…]
