Unclean and Undead by Richard Lee Byars are books one and two of the Haunted Lands trilogy. Both deal with a Civil war in the wizard dominated country of Thay, set in the world of the Forgotten Realms.

Well, read these two books and now I have to wait until March 2009 for the third one, so you might want to wait to read these until the trilogy is completed.

The stories of these books are decent, but they are not going to go down in history as genre-defining or great works of our civilization. But if you like wizards, vampires, the occasional wizard-vampire and combat give these books a try.

The writing is, again, decent. Byers creates characters that escape being two-dimensional, but not by much. The villains ( a relative term in this book, as even the "good guys" are pretty bad) are more interesting than the heroes, with deeper motivations. The fight scenes are evocative, and avoid being repetitive. The overall arc of the books is also intriguing, with more secrets to be revealed in the final book.

In my opinion, the best part of these books is Byers willingness to kill characters, both minor and major. It lends to the gritty feel of a war that involves demons and undead on both sides.

I recommend these books for those looking for something to read on the bus, that doesn't require a lot of thought.