![Nowhither: The Drowned World (The Unwithering Realm Book 2) by [Wright, John C.]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/417nyDWuxhL.jpg)
The long-awaited sequel to John C. Wright’s epic multiverse-spanning fantasy Somewhither (reviewed here), Nowhither is the second book of The Unwithering Realm series. Short and sweet, and it hardly needs saying, if you liked the first book, you need to read this one, too, and probably already have. Over a 3 year wait!
Our hero, the deathless hulking teenager Ilya Muromets, has just made a breathless escape from the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, rescuing 150 soon-to-be harem girls and his heartthrob, the voluptuous sea witch Penny Dreadful, with the indispensable aid of Nack, a headless monstrosity with the strength of 100 men and the distressing habit of eating people, Foster, a magical gypsy from some parallel world with all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, Ossifrage, an Old Testament style holy man with way cool super powers, and Abby, a young teenage girl with boundless spunk and heroism and some way cool powers of her own.
They dodge certain death when they dive through a Mobius Gate into a multiverse transfer station, where they are promptly trapped! But between Ossifrage’s ability to ignore the laws of gravity and Nack’s ability to reduce buildings to rubble, they hold off the pursuing vampires just long enough to escape…
…to another way-station, on another world in another parallel universe – at the bottom of an ocean! And so on. The non-stop action of the first book continues through roughly the first half of the second. Then the story takes a bit of a break from the action and banter of the first book in the series in order to fill in some much appreciated backstory. It gets emotionally complicated, and has all sorts of who-can-you-trust twists that I will not spoil.
A quick, fun read, well deserving of you money and time. Wright never fails to blow my mind with the pure density and variety of his imagination. Another author might take 2 or 3 of the ideas in this series and write a perfectly acceptable story; Wright kicks it up a whole bunch of manic, entertaining notches. Yard Sale of the Mind says: check it out.
Yard Sale of the Mind 
Is it as gruesome as the first? I really enjoyed Somewhither, but I couldn’t share it with my wife, so…
It’s both much less gruesome and shorter, with only a little light-hearted decapitation and one ears getting ripped off, but it doesn’t really stand alone, sadly. The second half in particular hinges on characters and events of the first book.
OTOH, it’s only a couple hundred pages, so she could read it and see for herself without investing too much time.
Maybe once I find a new job, I can pick it up, and once I’m done it can go on her “to-read” pile. With 3 children under the age of six, she is quite behind on her reading.