The Franchise
Thomas Elrod
Hardcover/eBook
ISBN: 978-1250406583
Tor, May 2026, 368 pages

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another book review! This month we’re diving deep down the playwright rabbit hole in a twisty tale of fantastic absurdity; our ticket punched to a land where wizards and magic might be real or might be Hollywood illusions—that’s right, it’s The Franchise by Thomas Elrod!

The premise for this particular book describes it as “Game of Thrones meets The Truman Show,” which kind of gives you an idea on what’s going to happen, but only at the most surface level (personally I would describe it as a strange mashup of the history of definitely not J.R.R. Tolkien, a biting satire of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a weird fantasy humans-only Jurassic Park, along with extended nods to Shakespeare throughout).

The Franchise is a multigenerational story that starts in 1962 with fantasy author Jean-Danton Souard pitching his 2,163 page fantasy novel called The Malicarn to an SF magazine publisher having a nervous breakdown about the Cuban missile crisis, and then it gets much weirder from there. There’s not much more I can say without ruining the intricacies of the plot, but suffice it to say you’re going to want to pay very close attention to the first third of the book because it deliberately sets out to confuse you about what is happening where and when. This is a book that is not going to hold your hand at the start, so reader beware.

However, once everything starts settling into place, the story finds its pace and zips along to a pretty satisfying conclusion, one filled with epic showdowns suitable to a fantasy world (but also absurd enough that I snorted with laughter more than once). I wouldn’t necessarily categorize the ending of The Franchise as a “happy” ending, but it is an ending that feels well-earned (and contains some extremely pithy statements on the state of our modern world, particularly the entertainment portion of it).

One of the things that I enjoyed about The Franchise was Elrod’s writing style, which reminded me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut. Outlandish scenarios are presented very matter-of-factly, with multiple not-quite-fourth-wall-breaking trenchant commentaries occurring throughout the course of the book, and a strong sense of dry, pessimistic humor permeates the entire thing. It never quite crosses the line over into cynicism, though, which I thought would have been very easy to do, so I have to commend Elrod for walking that fine line quite adroitly.

The other aspect of The Franchise that I felt brought it to another level was Elrod’s obvious love of theater and the craft of acting—the good, the bad, and the ugly. This book read like a demented Shakespearean play (complimentary) if Shakespeare happened to grow up with TikTok and the Internet, and I was never quite sure what was going to happen next. The only thing I did know for certain was that it would be bombastic and personal and something I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes away from, so kudos for keeping me entertained.

Overall, The Franchise is not your normal SF/F fare, but I definitely think it’s worth reading if you enjoy something a bit more cerebral. There are dragons and wizards and adventurers riding bravely forth in the name of their king, but none of it will be what you expect. At the end, though, I think you’ll find that you had a pretty good time, and that you’re left with quite a bit to think about, just like I was.