Synopsis:
Dispatched to Stone Hill to oversee the city’s defenses among nebulous rumors of the Shadow Council’s threat, Owen Greenwaters must rely on the city’s guard and its natural defenses to protect the citizens.
But when an army of mythical hooded ones bolstered by a sea serpent and the Soulless arrive in the wake of a terrible storm, he knows there is little he can do beyond hope the walls hold – and pray to the gods he and Stone Hill’s people will survive.
They are outnumbered, outmatched, and without magical support. Owen is the only knight present in the city. They will be overrun.
The Soulless are merciless and rarely take prisoners, but Owen and the survivors of Stone Hill are exceptions…
And some fates are worse than death.
Review:
Serpentus is a tense prisoner of war tale (and tail) that doesn’t shy away from the brutality of war, the concept of doing bad things for the good of your people, or the stubbornness of hope.
Ser Owen Greenwaters is the sole knight sent to help defend a small community from an invading army that has a water serpent monster and hooded soldiers in its ranks. Little does Owen and the defenders know, that Soulless mages of the Nameless God are there to kick butt and take prisoners. Owen survives the attack but is found underground with these hooded soldiers (Murkor) and his days go from bad to worse. Eventually some gnarly magic does some things and Owen is forced to fight for the Nameless God.
There’s a couple things here that makes this story stand out for me, and really kinda surprised me in a great way. I typically don’t like 1st person point-of-view (POV) because most authors don’t make the prose dynamic enough for me (meaning sentences read very formulaic with a lot of ‘I do’ actions – this happens, then I do this, then I do that, then I do this, etc.) and everything become quite monotonous. And secondly, most characters in 1st just aren’t interesting enough to be in their direct POV. For me, I need the character to have a really distinct voice for 1st POV to work.
But, ultimately, this story absolutely had to be told via 1st POV because of its nature. Luckily, Owen is a fantastic protagonist and Calvin destroys it with her prose.
He is the atypical knight: he’s brash, he’s stubborn, he’s full of anger, he swears all the f*cking time, he’s kinda funny. But his arc is so brutal, so damaging, so harsh, the story only works if we witness it through his close lens. And then we are blessed with Calvin’s prose. There is no sugar coating here, there’s no purpleness. It’s grim, it’s dramatic, it’s stunning really. Calvin makes us feel everything that Owen is going through in all the bad details. It’s just excellent writing, friends, and very dynamic, lyrical almost at times too.
The rest of the cast is filled with great characters that serve purpose. Tessamir, the love interest (yeah there is a potential HEA arc in this bleak story, aka part of Owen’s hope) is a great foil to Owen. There’s another knight Owen’s known for years and another soldier Owen meets from the besieged city that help shape the brutal consequences of their situation. There’s a ton of Murkor with ‘ in their names who are also forced into this hellish situation, some are friendly to Owen’s plight, others, eh… Then add the Scorpion Men who are literal half men/women, half scorpion. The title people Serpentus (you guessed it, half people/half serpent). There’s the evil Soulless mages. Plus gods that actually walk and talk and move the plot along. For such a short novel, this book has a lot of very interesting character species/peoples.
The pace is steady through Owen’s journey, never slowed down, even when he’s doing some mundane tasks as part of his capture early on or healing (he’s beat the heck up quite a bit so Owen has a lot of healing to do). Once the Nameless God magicks him into a soldier for his army, the battles kick up a notch. As mentioned, the prose is pretty damn good. The tension remains firmly at 11 throughout these intense scenes. And despite all the bleakness, there are plenty of spaces left for breathing where Owen and the rest of the cast can form their relationships, however strained they might be.
I will say this, before the Nameless God does his stuff on Owen, I felt like this story was going in one direction, namely the ‘prisoners either uprise and overcome their captors’ OR ‘prison escape’ only to pleasantly be shocked as to where it ended up going. I’m very happy this story went the direction it did as it might not have been as strong a read for me.
I blazed through Serpentus in a couple of sittings because I was glued to the pages of Owen’s dire predicament. I just had to know more, had to know what untold hell was about to unfold around him, and to see how bad it could get. This was a grim read but one that also had that shred of hope baked in. Highly highly recommend this story for those who like darker tales (and tails). This is also a story loosely connected to one of Calvin’s other series (Relics of War) so I’m gonna have to pick that up soon!
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