Casthen Gain: A Novella of the Graven

by

Essa Hansen

(Grimdark Magazine, July 2025, hc/pb, 146 pp.)

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

This action-packed space opera begins with the main character held prisoner and dumped on a planet with other captives, many of them aliens. Their goal is to find an anomalous object for their captors. Only the one who locates it will survive. Battles against the environment and each other follow.

Along the way, the reader learns something about the protagonist’s back story. He is a chef who possesses implants that allow him to determine the characteristics of bubble universes that are found on his home planet. After a rebel destroyed much of the planet’s technology, environment, and population, he accepted an assignment to track her down and kill her. However, he actually plans to fake her death and join her.

The chef uses his skill with the bubble universes, which are found in even greater numbers on the planet where he is dumped, to prepare elaborate meals, described in great detail. He acquires an alien as a companion. The extraterrestrial serves largely as comic relief. Leaving the alien behind in a protective bubble universe, he undertakes a dangerous odyssey to save both their lives.

I have tried to convey the novella’s breakneck pace and multiple speculative concepts. Much more goes on than I have indicated. A major plot development depends on an outrageous coincidence that raises the difficulty of suspending one’s disbelief to a stratospheric level.

The author displays a great deal of imagination, so much so that the reader is sometimes left several steps behind. This work appears to be a prequel to a trilogy of novels, with the goal of assembling the team of characters to be found in the books. Readers familiar with the author’s Graven trilogy are likely to appreciate this introduction to its many universes.

Victoria Silverwolf fails to grasp the meaning of this novella’s title.