Bezdanj is back, and the old gods are still silent

The line printed on the cover of the new Bezdanj works as the shortest possible synopsis: the powers of darkness are waking, the old gods say nothing. Under it sits a tree of life inside a silver ring on dark green, and above it the name of Aleksandar Tesic. The second book of the Kosingas trilogy went back on sale on July 31, in what the publisher Laguna describes as a refreshed edition.

Refreshed is doing real work in that sentence. Three things in the new printing were absent from the old one:

• illustrations, gathered into a separate block
• sprayed page edges in colour
• new passages written into the story itself

The book is sold in Delfi bookstores, on delfi.rs and laguna.rs, and through Laguna’s reader clubs.

The publishing sequence is easy enough to read. Book one, Kosingas: Red Zmaja, was reissued on May 21, 2026, book two arrived on Friday, and the third volume is the obvious next step in the line. Laguna has announced no date for it, so we will not invent one here.

What does an expanded edition actually change?

For a reader who is meeting the series now, this is simply a better looking copy and there is nothing more to weigh. For someone whose shelf already holds the old printing, the question gets sharper, because additions to the story mean the text that was once closed is no longer the same text. Authorial revision of an already published novel is not common practice in Serbian publishing, and it usually passes without a single line of comment, even though it alters what is read rather than only what is held. Sprayed edges are a commercial decision and nobody pretends otherwise. A rewritten scene is a literary one.

Who Aleksandar Tesic is

Tesic was born on March 5, 1961 in Cacak. He won the Stanislav Lem Award for 2023, and alongside Kosingas he has written the Milos Obilic and Kletva Kainova series, as well as the novels 2084, Crni mesec u usponu, Sveti rat za Carigrad, Gorolom and Lazarevo casomerje. He writes a great deal, and he does it in a genre that serious literary pages in Serbia still cover rarely.

From Jastrebac to Homolje

Bezdanj follows Kosingas and Kraljevic Marko, the folk hero known in English as Prince Marko, across country that exists on the map of Serbia, from Jastrebac to Homolje, along fairy paths, past shrines and marshes, down into caves and the underground chasms the novel is named for. Waiting there are dog headed men, water spirits, wild men, witches and dragons, creatures from Serbian folklore that function here as inhabitants of a world with its own rules rather than as decoration. Facing the heroes is Hromi Daba. That geography is local and recognisable, which gives the series something imported epic fantasy cannot match: the reader knows the place names before opening the book.

The frame is a collision of three forces, Christian knighthood, older Slavic mythology and an Ottoman invasion still on its way. That is why Kosingas reads as epic fantasy rather than as a historical novel with monsters in the background. Myth in Tesic is not ornament laid over history, it drives the plot and sets the limits of what the heroes are allowed to do.

Reissuing an entire domestic series within a few months is not a routine move, and it says at least as much about the market as about the book. Sprayed edges and an illustrated block have become standard equipment for editions bought not only to be read but to sit on a shelf facing outward. Laguna knows this and makes no secret of it. The open question is whether the additions to the text justify buying the novel twice, and the first people able to answer are the ones holding both versions and comparing them line by line.

If Kosingas has passed you by until now, this is the moment with the fewest excuses left: book one has been in stores since May, Bezdanj since Friday, and the third volume will arrive when it arrives.