Synopsis
On Earth, Hari Michaelson was a superstar. But on Overworld, he was the assassin Caine. Real monarchs lived and died at his hands and entire governments were overthrown—all for the entertainment of millions back on Earth. But now Hari, stripped of his identity as Caine, must fight his greatest battle: against the powerful corporate masters of Earth and the faceless masses who are killing everything he loves. Enemies old and new array themselves against him. And Hari is just one man—alone, half-crippled, powerless. They say he doesn’t have a chance. They are wrong.…
Review
In the first installment of The Acts of Caine, Matthew Woodring Stover set an expectation for the series. Heroes Die was brutal, bloody, but ultimately rather straightforward. It was an almost flawlessly executed classic action story, with clear quests for the protagonists and traditional (if layered) antagonists to stand in their way. Like a host of other series, it would be the right and proper thing to do to continue this vein in the sequel, perhaps building on it or throwing a new dimension into the conflict.
Stover had no interest in doing that.
Blade of Tyshalle is a wholly different kind of book. It’s a monster: an 800-page epic, bleak as hell and brutal as a butcher’s cleaver. The cast is wider. And deeper. And more complicated in their loyalties.
Hari is back, of course, though he is now a paraplegic most of the time, as the bypass surgery he received six years earlier, after the conclusion of Heroes Die, was not altogether successful. He is once again married to Shanna, but their marriage is no happily-ever-after. He has adopted Faith, Shanna’s daughter by Lamorak, and he loves her dearly…but she is a constant reminder of what once came between him and his wife.
And unlike Hari, Shanna still works as an Actor. She spends fully half the year on Overworld as the goddess Chambaraya, while Hari is stuck in San Francisco, working in the Studio Administrator position Kollberg once held. His only friend, it seems, is Tan’elKoth—”I Was Limitless”—the erstwhile God Emperor of Ankhana.
Hari is miserable.
So when he is called into the Studio to view a strange feed from one of the active Actors on Overworld, Hari is stunned. The Actor is a captive of an elf—or so it appears. In reality, the elf is none other than Kris Hansen, Hari’s old friend from the Studio Conservatory, thought lost or dead on Overworld for decades. And Kris comes with a dire warning: Studio operatives on Overworld have released a plague of HRVP, the super-rabies variant that once devastated Earth, and caused the caste system to be put in place.
There is only one chance Overworld has, and that is for Shanna to use her immunity to HRVP and her powers as Chambaraya to create an antivirus. While Hari rushes to get Shanna to Overworld, other powers are at work, and an apocalyptic conflict breaks out on two worlds.
In Blade of Tyshalle, Stover goes bigger, badder, bolder, more brutal. Hari has a new challenge before him, one that will again make him recontextualize what his relationship is with the character of Caine…and who he truly is at his core.
If you’ve ever taken a writing class or a fiction workshop, it’s likely that you’ve heard some variant of the following: “To write a compelling story, think of the worst thing you can do to your main character. Then do it.”
Stover took that advice to heart in Blade of Tyshalle, and then went even further. At times it feels like he is trying to think of the worst things he can do to his readers, as well, and the result is an absolute onslaught of horror. The bloody violence of Heroes Die is child’s play compared to this. Blade comes with every content warning in the book. (Yes, even that one.)
But here’s the thing. Where this sort of violence and graphic content is often used for shock value or even simple “entertainment”, Stover always has a deeper purpose. In Blade of Tyshalle, the core theme explores the potential of humanity. That includes the potential for both greatness and abhorrence. It also includes both humanity as a collective and humans as individuals. So when something unspeakable is happening on the page, it is always worth stopping to ponder why Stover chose to include it. What purpose does it serve in the ongoing conversation of humanity? How does it play into the growing philosophy of the series via the in-world group known as Cainists? And what does it reveal about the titular character?
At times, Stover will do some of the work for you. There are more passages—even extended passages—in this book where characters talk openly about their relative outlooks on existence, on their personal morals and philosophies. As always, there are no easy answers…but the author helps you along the way.
It is in this manner that Stover feels closest to his contemporary R. Scott Bakker. Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series is notorious (and oftentimes beloved) for its rigorous approach to philosophy, practically giving the reader a rhetorical swirly as characters ruminate and deliberate and outright debate. While Heroes Die has some elements of this for the critical reader, Blade of Tyshalle makes it central to the story.
It’s not all heady rhetoric, though. Oh no. This is Stover, and this is Caine, so there’s plenty of skull-bashing fun as well. In fact, Stover does a great job of both upping the ante when it comes to fight scenes and going into larger-scale conflict.
One of the more overlooked aspects of this series, in fact, is that the books have subtitles. Heroes Die is The Act of Violence; Blade of Tyshalle is The Act of War. (We’ll get to the third and fourth books in a different review.)
But that means that there truly is war at hand. While Caine incited some serious riots and skirmishes at the end of Heroes Die, the spectacle here is something else entirely. Armies will be on the move. Technology will strike sparks against magic.
Earth is invading Overworld.
Moreover, there is greater scope to the character work in this book. While Heroes Die did feature a handful of points-of-view, including Pallas Ril, Berne, Toa-Sytell, Kierendal, and Kollberg, Caine was always the focal point. In Blade, that is no longer the case. Deliann and Tan’elKoth take up substantial amounts of the spotlight, Kierendal and Toa-Styell make returns, and even Shanna’s daughter Faith gets a full arc. There’s another character as well, a pivotal character, but I will leave that to be discovered by those who take the plunge and read onward.
Ultimately, Blade of Tyshalle is one of the most ambitious books I’ve ever read. It’s expansive and deep, and it pushes the envelope in several ways. As with most ambitious books, it doesn’t always succeed in every endeavor. Though I can appreciate the demands Stover makes of me as a reader, I still find some of the graphic content to be too much. Two scenes in particular—in Chapters Seven and Eleven—are the most horrifying things I’ve ever read. They left real scars on my memory.
I cannot stress this enough: this book is not for those with tender stomachs.
Additionally, one stretch in the middle of the book can be slow going; this is where the philosophical aspects of the story are foremost, and they coincide with truly difficult circumstances for the characters involved. Stover himself is open about the difficulty he had writing this sequence, as he spoke about on the Inking Out Loud podcast.
Despite these hiccups, however, Blade of Tyshalle is still a powerhouse. This has some of the darkest lows in fantasy—and the resulting highs are among the brightest. Stover knows how to use foils and contrasts well in his plotting. It is epic in every sense of the word, pulling out all the stops for both the characters and the reader.
Like with Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle can be read as an ending. It wraps up in satisfying fashion (if not exactly a happy ending, to the surprise of nobody). But for those who choose to read onward, two more books await—and they only continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in fantasy literature.
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