INCOGNITO : An Aarastad Story
By Micah Swanson Harris
Minor Profit Press
104 pgs
“Incognito” is the fourth book in Micah Swanson Harris’ exciting fantasy swashbuckling series. It’s fantasy in that the stories take place on an alternate world, in particular a Scandinavian country called Aarastad which shares its history not only with the northern climes, but Russia as well. Most of the principalities border a gigantic glacier and the accepted mode of transportation is via massive skating ships. As if that wasn’t enough, the glacier itself acts as a portal between other dimensions in time and space.
Which is where this adventure begins. Captain Bulan and his crew, aboard a giant steam-powered ice-ship are returning to their home. What they don’t realize is that they have been manipulated of a powerful necromancer and are sent to the wrong Aarastad. Bulan believes Queen Freya to be his lover and when she loudly denies even knowing him in front of the entire royal court; he opts to take matters in his own hands by kidnapping her.
What Bulan doesn’t know is this Freya’s fiancée, Count Ambrose, is in actually the masked outlaw swordsman known as the Wurger Medicant. Think Zorro only with an ominous metal mask that hides his entire face. Naturally he sets off, with the Queen’s double, Ingrid, and a young man name Hans Brinker, to rescue his beloved. By the time he and his allies reach Bulan’s shipt, the story’s pacing is full into hyperdrive.
Harris’ imagination is deliriously over-the-top. There are plenty of great, fun, romantic characters and he’s not afraid to inject solid doses of slap-stick humor to lighten various scenes. In all, “Incognito” is a terrific adventure that will surely tempt you to hunt up the previous three volumes in his Aarastad tales. That would be a smart move on your part.
