Gary Alan Wassner’s fifth GemQuest novel combines sweeping fantasy adventure with an exploration of mercy, courage, identity, and the choices that define us
NEW YORK — Author Gary Alan Wassner returns to the richly imagined world of GemQuest with When Monsters Call Out the Names of Men, the fifth installment in his epic fantasy series and a #1 New Release on Amazon.
Set amid a world increasingly threatened by darkness, war, and forces that challenge not only life itself but the meaning people attach to their memories, beliefs, and identities, When Monsters Call Out the Names of Men brings the conflicts of the GemQuest saga toward their dramatic culmination.
As characters confront the devastating spread of the Darkening, they are forced to question whom they can trust, what they believe, and how far they are willing to go to defend the people and principles they hold dear. Battles of magic and power unfold alongside more personal struggles involving faith, loyalty, loss, revenge, and the difficult choice between cruelty and mercy.
For Wassner, those ethical questions are central to the story. Inspired by his philosophical background, his interest in exploring moral choices, and his lifelong love of the written word, he created GemQuest not simply as an adventure between good and evil, but as a story about characters whose convictions are tested under extraordinary circumstances.
At the heart of the saga is the relationship between Tomas and Davmiran, whose journey develops into a larger meditation on the strength required to choose compassion when vengeance may seem easier. Throughout the novel, Wassner combines complex characters and philosophical questions with the battles, supernatural forces, magic, danger, and expansive world-building expected by readers of epic fantasy.
When Monsters Call Out the Names of Men is written for established followers of GemQuest as well as readers drawn to thoughtful epic fantasy in which the characters’ internal struggles carry consequences as significant as the conflicts unfolding around them.
Published by Gatekeeper Press, the 450-page book is available in hardcover for $27.99 (ISBN 978-1-6629-7712-1), paperback for $17.99 (ISBN 978-1-6629-7713-8), and eBook for $8.99 (ISBN 978-1-6629-7714-5).
With When Monsters Call Out the Names of Men, Wassner delivers an ambitious conclusion built around a lasting question: when darkness makes cruelty easy, will mercy prove the greater strength?
