“Better to Live than to Die” was published in the anthology Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues. About this story, author John Gwynne says, “The Banished Lands has a violent past, where men and giants clashed in a war for supremacy and near-extinction for the vanquished. Now men rule the land, giants little more than a memory, lurking in the wilds and dark places. This tale takes place ten years before the events of Malice, book one of The Faithful and the Fallen, within the