The Failures, Benjamin Liar
The Failures, Benjamin Liar
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The Failures

Author: Benjamin Liar

Narrator: John Skelley

Unabridged: 26 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 07/02/2024


Synopsis

Welcome to the Wanderlands.
A vast machine made for reasons unknown, the Wanderlands was broken long ago. First went the sky, splintering and cracking, and then very slowly, the whole machine—the whole world—began to go dark.

Meet the Failures.
Following the summons of a strange dream, a scattering of adventurers, degenerates, and children find themselves drawn toward the same place: the vast underground Keep. They will discover there that they have been called for a purpose—and that purpose could be the destruction of everything they love.

The end is nigh.
For below the Keep, imprisoned in the greatest cage ever built by magicians and gods, lies the buried Giant. It is the most powerful of its kind, and its purpose is the annihilation of all civilization. But any kind of power, no matter how terrible, is precious in the dimming Wanderlands, and those that crave it are making their moves.

All machines can be broken, and the final cracks are spreading. It will take only the careless actions of two cheerful monsters to tip the Wanderlands towards an endless dark … or help it find its way back to the light.

“The Failures is the kind of book you find maybe once, under a blood moon, if you’re lucky enough to wander off the trail … an unabashed triumph of speculativefiction. It’s not exactly science fiction, not quite fantasy … deep, thrilling (I’m looking at you, Deadsmith), and masterfully atmospheric.”—Daniel Cohen, author of the Coldmaker Saga

Reviews

Goodreads review by Petrik on March 31, 2024

This review is a copy of the transcript of my video review on The Failures Review copy provided by the publisher—DAW Books—in exchange for an honest review. 4.5/5 stars The Failures is an extremely ambitious, mind-bending, and meticulously constructed debut novel. “If we are truly just cogs, and part......more

Goodreads review by Nick on March 26, 2024

By all rights I SHOULD have loved this book, I SHOULD have turned the final page and shouted from the highest mountain about how much it wowed me, I SHOULD have been totally sucked into this story because the description reads like the blueprint to the perfect book that was written especially for my......more

Goodreads review by Brok3n on August 30, 2024

Fools on the mountain Benjamin Liar's (a pseudonym, of course) debut novel The Failures is a big book, the first novel in the planned Wanderlands Trilogy. It has been a long time in the making. In the author's note "A Round of Applause, A Round of Shots", he tells usI started writing— not this book,......more

Goodreads review by Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) on June 23, 2024

2.5 Stars This one had a great premise as a fantasy book with post-apocalyptic elements. I have loved a few stories with similar setups so I was hopeful I would love this one too. Unfortunately the execution here did not work for me. Specifically my struggle was with the choice of the narrative style.......more

Goodreads review by King on August 30, 2024

Put simplest, “The Failures” is a novel that feels tailor-made for me, with style and substance; plot development, misdirection, and mystery; and characters and (most memorably) worldbuilding that hooked me immediately and kept me coming back for more - wishing there was more even still - and has me......more