TL;DR Review: Suicide Squad done right. Grim, gritty, sarcastic, and charmingly irreverent. Entertaining from start to finish.
Synopsis:
‘Seven powerful mages want to make the world a better place. We’re going to kill them first.’
Picture a wizard. Go ahead, close your eyes. There he is, see? Skinny old guy with a long straggly beard. No doubt he’s wearing iridescent silk robes that couldn’t protect his frail body from a light breeze. The hat’s a must, too, right? Big, floppy thing, covered in esoteric symbols that would instantly show every other mage where this one gets his magic? Wouldn’t want a simple steel helmet or something that might, you know, protect the part of him most needed for conjuring magical forces from being bashed in with a mace (or pretty much any household object).
Now open your eyes and let me show you what a real war mage looks like . . . but be you’re probably not going to like it, because we’re violent, angry, dangerously broken people who sell our skills to the highest bidder and be damned to any moral or ethical considerations.
At least, until such irritating concepts as friendship and the end of the world get in the way.
My name is Cade Ombra, and though I currently make my living as a mercenary wonderist, I used to have a far more noble-sounding job title – until I discovered the people I worked for weren’t quite as noble as I’d believed. Now I’m on the run and my only friend, a homicidal thunder mage, has invited me to join him on a suicide mission against the seven deadliest mages on the continent.
Time to recruit some very bad people to help us on this job . . .
Full Review:
The Greatcoats series established itself as one of my all-time favorites for its swashbuckling flavor, but more still for the inherent nobility of the character and the impossible optimism of the story. Spellslinger and the Argosi books continued the tradition of heroism in a dark world.
Malevolent Seven does exactly the opposite: it sets up the villains, true down and dirty bastards, as the characters to follow, and goes well out of its way to show just what a bunch of a**holes they can be.
There’s a delightful irreverence and sarcasm to this story, very evocative of Deadpool, that makes it a true pleasure to read. Even when you know the people on the page are terrible, you can’t stop reading because it’s just so compelling—you have to know what depths of depravity they’ll stoop to next. It’s never truly cruel or ugly, though, but manages to walk the razor-thin line and stay just on the side of the angels.
Well, not exactly the angels—as you’ll see in the story, what we know as “angels” and “demons” are actually delightfully twisted and played with to add a wonderfully complex flavor to the typical “good vs. evil” trope.
One thing I absolutely enjoyed about this story was that it was never, ever predictable. Every time I expected something, the story took a hard left turn and did either the opposite or something I could never have anticipated. Never a dull moment with this story.
The characters, though a bunch of villainous bastards, were surprisingly fun to read—very Suicide Squad, but done right. Cade, the POV character, in particular, was a lot of fun, but all of the “Malevolent Seven” were complex and well-developed to an impressive extent. Every one of them are colorful, fresh, and feel new when they could very well have fallen into the trap of homogeneity.
The mysteries were also a nice touch. First, there’s the mystery of who kills (SPOILER). Then the mystery of what the job is that Cade definitely doesn’t want to take on. After that, the mystery of Cade’s past and the nature of his “wonderist” powers. And, finally…I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s packed with a whole mess of fun twists and reveals.
I absolutely enjoyed every moment I spent in this dark, twisted world, so am extremely delighted to hear there will be more books coming with these characters. Because fantasy needs more oddball, irreverent, almost-but-not-quite-a-spoof-with-a-lot-of-heart stories like this one!
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