Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy. Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them. For my latest Waiting on Wednesday post, I look at a unique and compelling new fantasy novel coming out in 2027 with Termina Station by Nick Martell.
There have been some very talented fantasy authors who have gotten their start in the 2020s, but one of these authors who really stood out to me was the incredible Nick Martell. Debuting in 2020, Martell impressed me right off the bat with The Kingdom of Liars. The first book in his Legacy of the Mercenary King trilogy, The Kingdom of Liars was an exceptional fantasy novel that saw a damaged protagonist attempt to restore his disgraced family and uncover a conspiracy impacting his city. I had such a great time with The Kingdom of Liars and it ended up being one of my favourite books, audiobooks and debuts of 2020. Martell continued this excellent writing throughout the entirety of the Legacy of the Mercenary King series, with the following books, The Two-Faced Queen and The Voyage of the Forgotten, each being incredible reads. Indeed, The Two-Faced Queen was one of my favourite books and audiobooks of 2021, while The Voyage of the Forgotten was one of my favourite books of 2022.
After such a great opening trilogy, I made sure to keep an eye out for more books from Martell, and I was especially keen for some sort of sequel series that would follow some of the open storylines from the first series. However, after a few years without any news from Martell and I was beginning to worry we might not see any more from him. That changed earlier this week when by chance I found out that Martell had a new book coming out in 2027, Termina Station.
Termina Station, which is currently set for release in February 2027, is an intriguing new novel from Martell, which takes a protagonist on a unique sounding journey through life and death. This new book has very compelling plot idea behind it, which should prove interesting to explore as it is a very different sort of fantasy adventure from Martell.
Plot Synopsis:
Joe Hill’sNOS4A2 meets Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes in this captivating novel about a father trapped in Knowhere, a deadly border town between life and death, run by the sinister Mister Teeth.
When Roger falls asleep on the train after a long day at work, he’s shocked to learn he isn’t stuck at the end of the line. Instead, he emerges from the last stop to step out into the rainy gloom…in a place he’s never heard of: Knowhere, where monsters roam at night and the only way home is to travel through each of the five ringdoms to the very center. It is only there, at Termina Station, that he can take a train out of Knowhere and return to his wife and children.
But each ringdom has its own twisted logic, and the ticketmaster, Mister Teeth, isn’t keen on letting Roger out of Knowhere. With Mister Teeth’s son in tow, Roger hopes he has what it takes to puzzle his way out of each ringdom and face his demons in the process. But Mister Teeth is a powerful enemy, and he’ll do anything to stop his son from boarding the train at Termina Station.
Termina Station looks set to be a very curious and compelling new book, which is looks set to be very different from Martell’s previous epic-fantasy trilogy. A standalone fantasy story about exploring a dark realm of death and mystery likely inspired by the protagonists’ own demons has a Stephen King-vibe to it (or Joe Hill as the above synopsis suggests), and I’ll be interested to see how Martell brings this about in Termina Station. This will likely be a very personal, character-driven story, with the protagonist forced to overcome aspects of their past, and I’m curious to see how that ties into the more fantastic or horror-inspired aspects of the setting. I’m also intrigued by the book’s villain, Mister Teeth, who has the potential to be a chilling and haunting figure, and I cannot wait to see them hunting the protagonist. All this promises to be quite a cool story, and I know that Martell has the writing chops to really pull it together into something special.
If I’m being honest, the moment that I saw Nick Martell had a new book coming out, I knew I had to read it. However, the above intriguing plot idea has also gotten me quite excited, and I am now very keen to read Termina Station. Sure to be one of the more unique novels of early 2027, Termina Station is now very high on my to-read list for the new year, and I cannot wait to dive into it.