Undead- The Haunted Lands Book 2 by Reggie Lee Byers

The country of Thay in the Forgotten Realms has long been ruled by the Red Wizards, masters of Magic. But they are not kindly overloards, being more concerned with their own power and the mastering of all sorts of magic. Each school of magic has a seat on the council and the heads of the schools are called Zulkirs.

Recently, one of the Zulkirs, Szass Tam, the Zulkir of the school of necromancy, and an undead creature called a Lich (who better to head a school dealing with magics that control the dead?) broke with the rest of the council to try and take over the entire country of Thay. For ten years now, the war has raged, and the rest of the council is slowly losing the fight.

Unless Szass Tam's army, the army of the other mages must eat, sleep and rest. and when the warriors fall dead, Szass Tam can merely add the fallen to his own army in the form of zombies, skeletons, wraiths or some other form of undead. Nevertheless, the other mages have a chance to trap Szass Tam's undead army near the Keep of Sorrows, but it is a trap set up by Szass Tam himself and a cataclysm occurs when the Goddess of Magic, Mystra, dies, setting off a magical cataclysm across the land. Since Mystra's job is to hold together the Weave, the intertwining threads of magic that give magic its shape and force, magic immediately starts failing, and magic already existing goes wild, exploding across the land in surges and sparks of blue lightning.

It does have the effect of freeing the vampire Tammith from the control of Szass Tam. Tammith was once human, but was experimented on by Szass Tam's comrade Xingax, who made her what she is today. Though Tammith believes that she is no longer human, and doesn't have human emotions, when she meets up again with Bareris, the man she once loved, now a bard fighting against Szass Tam with the rest of the council, how long will her empty words last? And will they even be able to survive the war with Szass Tam against the rest of the Kingdom?

This novel straddles the line between Fantasy Role-Playing and Horror. Defeat for the council means a land where the dead outnumber the living, and the living will be sacrificed to the needs of the dead. At this point, there has been so much fighting for so long, that the dead in the country outweigh the living. But it is also the tale of the no-longer living and the living joining forces to defeat Szass Tam. Griffon-riders Aoth and Bareris, the undead Ghost Mirror, and Tammith herself, all choose to fight Szass Tam and aid the living against the undead. But with the odds so stacked against them, how can they prevail?

This book sets up the sequel and the final book in the trilogy, Unholy, and it promises to be quite different from the open fighting in Undead. At this point, it's hard to hold out any hope for the survivors to wrest control away from the victors. But then again, you never know...