I’ve been a fan of Matthew Hughes since Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice were published by Warner Books in 2001. Hughes has mastered the tone and worlds of the great Jack Vance. Hughes’s pastiches of Vance’s Dying Earth and the Gaean Reach space operas ring true and capture the richness of a unique Science Fiction universe.

In Hughe’s latest novel, Henchmen (2025), two characters meet and find themselves embroiled in the machinations of the Vanderoy Wizards’ Guild. Vunt is a gambler with greater expectations.  Oldo is has left his family’s farm in search of adventure. 

The two young men meet when they both seek work at a riverside warehouse that handles goods being shipped up-stream and down-stream.  The operation reeks of illicit activities, but Vunt and Oldo accept the lucrative pay while they investigate their boss’s shifty schemes.

The schemes involve magical items of great power. The Wizards’ Guild offer Vunt and Oldo jobs as henchmen and send them on a dangerous trip to discover who desires the magical objects and what plot is brewing to invoke ancient powers by power-mad thaumaturges.

Fans of Matthew Hughes will enjoy the episodic style of Henchmen, the battles of spell-slingers, and the dreaded terrors of the Underworld. Vunt and Oldo, minor characters in Hughes’s Baldemar stories, get to take center stage in their own novel of wizardry, menace, and danger. GRADE: B+