Synopsis:
Don’t kill the messengers.
As a bodyguard for the King’s Envoys, Gen is content with her life of traveling, drinking wine, and hitting things with her sword. It’s the perfect job. Until the King sends her and her friend Cordyn into war-torn enemy territory on a mission to deliver vital military intelligence to an allied nation.
The problem? The mission is a sham.
Gen is tasked with determining if Cordyn is a spy who is selling information to the enemy. Cordyn is the worst kind of libertine: brash, arrogant, and on the run from half the husbands in the kingdom, but Gen can’t imagine him betraying her or their nation.
With obtuse bandits, vengeful mages, and a resolute lutist, they embark on a daring rescue mission, complicated by Cordyn’s increasingly complex schemes. As ominous enemy plots surface, Gen and Cordyn must decide what matters most. Their nation or their friends.
Review:
I set out with a plan to bash Dave Lawson’s The Envoys of War because he deserves all the bashing he gets, but like the plans of Cordyn Tallen, my plan went off the rails and here I sit talking nicely about this book. Stupid plans…
I joke, not only with Dave (who I enjoy lively banter with almost daily in our little indie author group The Secret Scribes) but with the amount of my use of ‘plan’ in the previous paragraph (there are a lot of plans in this book). But to be honest, The Envoys of War does not take itself too seriously, and it is a fun fantasy story with a touch of bad, but mostly filled with the misadventures of two good pals.
The plot of TEoW (not to be confused with The Eye of the World by the late great Robert Jordan, two vastly different types of stories!) starts off one way and ends in a completely different manner. Our sword-swinging lush, Gen, and the rakish libertine, Cordyn, set off to bring a message to another nation as they are Envoys (aka messengers for their liege), but before leaving on said mission, Gen is tasked with determining if Cordyn might be a spy. And while there is a heavy dose of mystery with this arc, it doesn’t fill the entire tome as the plot veers off into a rescue mission (see, ‘mission’ is another favorite word here) of sorts, filled in with a third subplot of revenge. And while the ‘could Cordyn be a spy’ arc could be interesting in its own right, I think it was smart of Mr. Lawson to introduce a bigger arc, one that has far more overarching consequences. It also allowed for a ton of character growth, especially by our good fornicator Cordyn.
This story is very character-driven and would fall flat on its face if not for the strength of the three main characters/POVs. Gen, ah Gen. Who doesn’t love a sword-wielding, wine-drinking, let’s just be friends and stab things type of character? She’s a simple woman, but a loyal woman. And she takes it as good as she gives it in this story and I enjoyed reading her immensely. Cordyn Tallen is nothing if not a ne’er-do-well with a taste for married women and concocting schemes. I know he will be a firm fan fave, but it did take me a little while to warm up to him as he kinda grated on my nerves. I do think that’s the point though with Cordyn. And while I would argue this is Gen’s story with a heavy dash of Cordyn, I would say my favorite character was Tobias Stinton, a water mage hellbent on revenge against Cordyn for past familial slights. Tobias had a very intriguing arc and I liked all the mystery surrounding him, not to mention his water magic had some really cool aspects to it. Although, I must say, I did hear about some pre-release edits of Tobias’ arc and I wish that wasn’t changed because I would have loved him even more! We get a lot of supporting cast who have distinct voices and will definitely be bigger players in later books, such as Cork (an axe-wielding brute who’s pretty funny), Evalia (a love interest for basically everyone but Gen), and Topper (a streetwise kid with a heart of gold who just wants Tobias to calm the eff down with his revenge plans).
There’s not a large breadth of magic in this story, but I did find it interesting to use water as the main source. A lot of times we see fire or lightning when we think about elemental magic, but rarely do we see water on its own. I thought this was fun, and it opened up for a lot of different uses. Sure we get the standard ice shards thrown as violent projectiles of death, but we also get to see some other, more practical uses. Essentially, anything with water in it, be it actual water or blood, the mages in this world can manipulate it. And we see this used as a means of healing, or in the case of a complex plan needing some distractions, a mind muddying. There is even a branch of mages who are ship captains with bicorne hats, and this plays into Cordyn’s backstory quite nicely. There is an endless amount of uses in this system and I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to seeing what else Mr. Lawson brews.
The prose teeters between good to excellent, mostly being simple and straightforward. There are times when we get a lot of A to B to C to D type sentence structures, but it never takes away from the read. The pace is pretty steady, there are enough quieter moments interspersed with the action-oriented ones. Once the plot shifts towards the rescue mission, the pace does pick up quite nicely until post climax when we get a nice comedown, setting up the larger series.
I did have a few qualms and this is mostly down to personal tastes, so take these with a heaping grain of salt. Or in Gen’s case, a big gulp of winterplum wine. This story has a ton of pithy banter and humor, but at times, some fell flat for me. Almost too on the nose, if you will. Or there were some moments where a character had a thought, then dropped a witty line afterward, where I think it would have been stronger to just drop the witticism and skip the inner thought. Or vice versa. I also was pulled out of the story with some of the ‘gentlemanly’ comments as a means to diffuse potential violent situations. The ‘good day, sir.’ or the ‘forgive me, madam’. For me, it felt too much like a Monty Python skit. The biggest niggle I had was during a few of the action scenes there was far too much dialogue, breaking the tension. Even in the climax, Gen and Cordyn have a decently long convo scheming a way to defeat the villain while the villain just stood there waiting. Again, these are personal taste sort of things.
Overall, I had a great time with The Envoys of War and I know that with how the book ended, we will see more shenanigans of Gen and Cordyn trying to save the world…er…maybe just save themselves. The Envoys of War releases on October 19, 2024!
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