Marius Helles is a thief, a liar, and currently hard up for cash. That's why he's picking over battlefield corpses for rings, gold teeth, and spare change, accompanied by his not-too-bright apprentice Gerd. Unfortunately, the remaining soldiers notice them. Ten minutes later, Gerd is disemboweled and Marius is... in the Land of the Dead.
Turns out the dead want something. They want a king. They send Marius back upstairs to beg, borrow, or -- more plausibly -- steal one.
This book has the juice. Marius is a classic sarcastic bastard, but he's also been through deep crap, of which he deserves a precisely-calculated 66.7 percent. The narration careens between gleeful sarcasm and honest melancholy, on top of the rapid-fire disaster that is Marius's life. Every so often, to keep you on your toes, something genuinely creepy happens. I shall not list examples, not even in my usual elliptical way, because it's just too much fun reading the book.