Kazimir Wolfe remains on the run from both the law and an ancient order trying to kill him, but staying hidden is becoming harder and harder as his group of traveling companions continues to grow. It started with Duke the talking golden retriever, who's mind is inhabited by an ancient wizard, and then added on two knights that were sent forward through time to protect him. Then a wise cracking djinn was added, who does nothing but insult Kaz all the time for being stupid, and finally the grumpy 30 pound cat from the Nether, known as Mr Boots. As stated in book one, this urban fantasy doesn't take itself too seriously, and now that The Order has successfully opened a portal to the Nether, Kaz and his group of misfits must figure out how to close it. And then, of course, deal with the creatures that came through before the entire world realizes that magic is real. The dragon might have something to say about that though.

This twelfth installment in the series is all about The Unseen Empire and the class [Witch]. As a reminder, Laken is the blind Earther [Emperor], who named his girlfriend Durene as his [Paladin] and the [Witch] Wiskeria as his [General]. After getting their asses kicked by the goblins and [Chieftain] Rags, Laken added his newly built trebuchets to the human army pursuing the goblin [Lord] before realizing that he and the goblins were being used to conquer the city of Liscor. So he rounded up the surviving goblins and headed home. In the meantime, Durene has finally recovered from her terrible injuries, but she's still afflicted by terrible self doubts and confusion. Wiskeria feels that she has always been a poor [Witch], and is an even worse [General], despite the fact that their defeat was largely due to a well timed betrayal. Now the [Witches] are forming a special coven to meet with Laken and ask for his protection against the [Hunters] that are killing them. Seven of the most powerful and unique [Witches] have come to join Wiskeria, including the oldest, most powerful, and notorious of all, Wiskeria's mother.

Kazimir Wolfe has been on the run since he was a teenager. It started the night that unknown assailants killed his aunt while he was out, and he has been on the run from those killers ever since. Those killers were looking for him that night, and from then on law enforcement has been as well, since they think he was the one who killed his aunt. Why did an unknown organization want to kill him as a teenager? Because he is wizard. And as far as Kaz knows, he is the only wizard in our modern times. And unfortunately, he isn't a very good one. I mean, there aren't any other wizards around to teach him, and It doesn't help that there isn't a lot of magic available in our world to work with. But there used to be, and now it is coming back. You would think that was a good thing for Kazimir, but not exactly. Magic seems to be building up for a "Convergence" between our realm and the Nether world, and only a wizard can stop it.

On a desert world a village struggles to survive. Pell's passion is deciphering the odd bits and pieces that the Ancients left behind. Her neighbors consider it a waste of time and would rather melt the artifacts down for the metal they so desperately need. Everything changes when a stranger, the first Pell has ever met, asks her to help repair Ancient machines in what the villagers thought was an impenetrable Tower. Driven by curiosity to see inside the Tower, and Moseus' promise of payment in the form of scrap metal, she agrees. In the Tower she finds three Ancient machines, all larger and far more complex than anything she has seen before. She also meets the other inhabitant of the Tower, Heartwood, and she wants to decipher his mercurial moods as much as she wants to know what the machines actually do. Almost immediately she begins to have visions, or maybe memories, of the Tower and its inhabitants, which draw her ever deeper into the mysteries of the Ancients, a tale of warring gods, and the history of the village of Emgarden.

As the centuries go by, even Hadrian Marlowe is beginning to get old. His expertly crafted palatine genome, and the cryo sleep he has endured while traveling through space, can only extend his life so far, and Marlowe is now over 600 years old. It has been two centuries since he struck the emperor and fled imperial space to Jadd, leaving behind a war and political intrigue for the life of a fugitive. He has certainly enjoyed his time on Jadd, especially the last 40 years raising his daughter Cassandra. She is a skilled warrior who has learned swordplay from the famed Maeskoloi of Jadd, but she knows little of the dangers that exist beyond this planet. So when an Imperial messenger arrives with a pardon and calls Marlowe back into service in a war that humanity is losing, he has no desire to accept. But he must, because if he does not, there will be no future for any human, and that includes his Cassandra.

A man wakes up with no memories and is horrified to find himself in a room that clearly belongs to a dark wizard given its decor. He's even more horrified to discover that he himself is the dark wizard who styles himself Dread Lord Gavrax. He's a middle aged mediocre dark wizard living in a tiny castle above a pathetic village served by goblins and a creepy majordomo who mostly talks about torturing people. Gav even has a princess locked away in the dungeon. Unfortunately, he can't just free the princess and sneak away to live anonymously because it seems she's a component in a ritual that he agreed to participate in with three other, far more impressive, dark wizards. If he fails to show up with the princess they will obviously hunt him down and kill him slowly, but the more he learns about this ritual the more wary he is about participating, let alone sacrificing an innocent woman.

The 7th floor of the dungeon was abruptly destroyed, so this instead of the 7th floor this book takes place on the 8th, known as The Ghosts of Earth. Each team's leader must pick a location to start, and despite being well prepared for the Bahamas, Carl and Donut wind up in Cuba because Donut isn't exactly great at geography. Because no crawlers were eliminated on the aborted 7th floor, the AI has made the floor extra deadly in an attempt to dwindle down the number of crawlers before the 9th floor Faction Wars. This level requires the crawlers to collect monsters ala Pokemon in order to build out the decks they will use to combat other crawlers and NPCs in a real time version of Magic the Gathering. Of course, every part of this is done in a ridiculous over the top manner that culminates in an insane multiplayer card battle with everything at stake.

Thanks to our favorite science fiction franchises we most frequently imagine alien intelligence to be humanoid, or at least an animal capable of communicating in some way. What humans find on the planet they call Pax is such a different life form that neither side truly understands what they are dealing with, and how they will both forever be altered by the relationship. To the colonists who fled a dying Earth with the idealistic intention to adapt themselves to their new environment, rather than the opposite, their new home looks like paradise. Pax has a breathable atmosphere, plenty of water, only slightly higher gravity than Earth norm, and abundant flora and fauna. Too late one of the colonists realizes that to the "plants" on this new world humans will only be tolerated based on what they can offer, and that they need to choose their new allies carefully if they wish to survive. Semiosis is a long tale of how each generation changes as they adapt to Pax and their evolving relationship with the photosynthesizing sentience known as Stevland.

The sixth floor of the dungeon is identical in size and layout to the 3rd floor, but the same cities that were bustling with NPCs on floor 3 now lie in ruins and are infested with hundreds of years of overgrowth. This level is called The Hunting Grounds, and it features hunters that try to kill the crawlers in order to take their gear. The hunters use the gear to outfit their respective factions down on the 9th floor, and there are also freelancers that collect gear to sell to the highest bidder. The hunters all start at level 50, but they can kill NPC mobs to level up just like the crawlers do. After 17 days of hunting and killing each other, the level culminates in the Butcher's Masquerade, which is a party attended by the remaining hunters and the top 50 crawlers. What could possibly go wrong there?

Wexler, best known for his gunpowder fantasy series The Shadow Campaigns, takes on the the LitRPG genre with this humorous tale about a human woman who is summoned into a fantasy world as a savior, but winds up failing and dying horribly. Repeatedly. However, she's determined to not only be on the winning side, but also to get herself chosen as the Dark Lord themself. Davi has approximately two months to recruit some Wilder followers and cross most of the map before the convocation that will choose the next Dark Lord. After her many lives. and deaths, she knows every inch of the human Kingdom, including the location of the nearest camp of Wilders, but she knows almost nothing about the Wilds themselves. Or how the convocation actually chooses a Dark Lord. No problem. After all, what's the worst thing that can happen? She'll just find herself back in an ice cold pond listening to a doddering old wizard's long winded speech again and hope she doesn't make the same mistake again. Yes, there's a lot of dying, a lot of swearing, lots of sex off screen, and thousands of confused Wilders along the way.