Started: 18/08/20
Finished: 28/08/20
Spoilers: No
This book was awesome! It’s got so much going for it and I think it makes a great transition book, bridging the gap between fantasy and grimdark. Any fantasy readers who want to ease into grimdark could do a lot worse than giving this a go. Though not fully grimdark in nature, it certainly has some more traditional grimdark elements going for it that blend very nicely into the fantasy elements.
Characters
A story with no heroes, and I love it. Everyone feels flawed in their own way, and they all make questionable decisions in the name of war, but not having an archetypal hero character was so fun. It gave the characters an edge.
A great mix of characters from different social standings are given POVs in this book. We have the elite soldiers (essentially samurai types) leading a resistance, trying to fight back. We have a single working-class mother trying to get by. Then there’s the daughter of a renown warrior who, for once, isn’t playing the ‘strong independent female’ role, but who is in actual fact a self-professed coward who runs from war. There’s a street kid with a destructive streak. We even get a psychotic, villain perspective. It creates a very interesting dynamic seeing people from such different walks of life trying to cope with war.
For at least half the book, I couldn’t stand Tinnstra or Dren. Tinnstra had no personality outside of her cowardice, and Dren was far too single-mindedly in love with blowing stuff up cause it made him feel like a big man. That being said, when both characters hit their turning points and started to develop and grow as characters, they ended up being two of my favourites. The growth was well done and the reasons behind it felt completely valid and believable.
And this author has absolutely no qualms about killing people. So many people I enjoyed died, some in really sudden, unexpected ways, which makes it all the more shocking. There were moments I was like, ‘yeah, but that person can’t die cause they’re too cool. Surely the author wouldn’t just kill them off like that?’ Spoiler alert, the author does! He just kills people...and I love it. It makes the stakes so much higher. I was genuinely scared for some of the characters at points cause I really didn’t know who was going to make it out alive.
Plot
This is a fantastic example of how war affects the ‘little people’. Often we see these sweeping stories of heroes fighting and winning a war and huzzah! and all that, but rarely do we see the after-effects of war. And even rarer still do we see the after-effects or a war LOST.
War has so many more factors than a lot of authors are willing to acknowledge. It isn’t simply a battle of good and evil and things can go back to normal when it’s over. War also has terrible economic implications, societal, class, religious prejudices, even educational implications, much less the emotional impact of war on the normal people just trying to survive. Mike Shackle does a really great job showing the many effects of war on the day to day life of normal people, and how easy it is to fall into a new ‘normal way of life’ and having no choice but to accept it.
The story opens with the Egril attacking Jia, and the Egril defeating them overwhelmingly. Then we jump six months later to find an Egril-occupied Jia. The people are stripped of their religious beliefs and basic rights. The rest of the novel takes place over the course of a week or so as a small resistance group fights back against their oppressors. Spies, assassins, riots, suicide bombers, this book doesn’t pull its punches when exposing the brutality and reality of war.
Setting
This has a very interesting world that feels half Asian, half European, which in turn makes this world feel wholly unique. There were certain elements, like the Shulka for example, and the religion of Jia, that felt definitively Japanese, yet the world itself and the people within it felt more generic European. And though I could perfectly picture this world in my head (a credit to the good writing), I never felt totally sure WHAT I was supposed to be picturing. Was I supposed to imagine traditional British architecture or Japanese?
And same with the characters. Though they were described physically, I could never quite picture them 100%. I think the use of standard 'non-cultural' (if you will) fantasy names is what stopped me from visualising them as Japanese-inspired characters. And I really wanted to (due to the current east-Asian fantasy kick I’m on), but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to imagine the characters this way. Cause although certain aspects pointed towards a Japanese-inspired society, many other aspects pointed to European.
Though blending the western and eastern cultures together felt highly original and fun, it did somewhat hinder my ability to visualise one or the other for this world. But on the whole, I enjoyed the setting a lot, I just would’ve liked a tad more clarity on what sort of civilisation is being depicted.
Writing Style
I had no issues with the writing. Very clear and concise. As mentioned above, though I struggled at times to choose what to visualise in my head, the world I settled on visualising felt very clear in my mind. Does that even make sense? I think what I’m saying is I would’ve liked more details in the world descriptions, but what I imagined with the information I had, still felt like a very real and well-constructed world.
Nothing within the writing was confusing. It was compelling and engaging, with clever little mini cliffhangers at the end of chapters to keep you reading.
As I mentioned before about the author killing off characters, I find this an excellent way to build tension and keep a reader on the edge of their seat.
Through years of watching and playing graphic TV shows and games, I feel a little desensitised to violence. In fact I’m the kind of person who enjoys more violence in my media, and nothing excites me more than a good old battle scene. So the fact that this author wrote a torture scene that actually made me cringe, was done well indeed.
Final Impression
Fantastic start to a series I’ll definitely be reading more of. I can’t wait to dive into the sequel when it's out.
Comments