A Kagen the Damned novel
Jonathan Maberry closes out his ambitious fantasy series, and fortunately for readers the execution is just as good as the vision.
Kagen Vale is, however unwillingly, a general leading a growing army from many nations whose leaders are willing to throw in against the Yellow King out of hatred, fear, or both. Still, they are heavily outnumbered, and there are a number of wild cards in play. Magic, skillfully employed by Maberry as an s analogy for nuclear weapons, has returned to the world and its use is spreading. The Yellow King, with his chaos-loving nonhuman advisor the Prince of Games, is not only the resurrector and master of magic but has ambitions that go far beyond “repainting the old Silver Empire yellow.” He understands the cosmic forces that pivot on the physical realm of mortals, and he hopes his alliance with the Lovecraftian god Hastur will transform him into a demigod who remake the world and even the universe. It’s not a new idea to have the fate of the world rest on a single determined individual (see LOTR), but Maberry puts plenty of original ideas into his epic. Kagen and untranslatable books for magic head for the Tower to get the Lady’s help, but the Yellow King has turned loose all manner of eldritch creatures to take her down. Kagen’s allies push north looking for the imprisoned dragon used as the source of the Yellow King’s magic, with the while the Queen and the Widow – who shows there is much more to her than a teenage girl - must face savage enemies on the seas to make their own contribution. Kagen’s allies and friends, especially Tuke and his lover Filia, shoulder heavy burdens – they never wanted to be generals, either, but they face up to it. Opposing them are not only massive armies of conventional troops, but hundreds of new or "re-powered" sorcerers of all stripes, against which Kagen's army has one uncertain comic-relief wizard.
It's all done in vivid prose that makes the reader feel the
sting of battle and smell the blood. Maberry’s grasp of weapons and tactics
comes into play, and the ways battles and wars unfold feels authentic. The
author works in his beloved classical references – “pale kings and princes,”
indeed – in a magic-infused future Earth connected to ours by a tenuous skein
of artifacts and legends.
I read the last 50 pages twice to enjoy the way all the
threads and clues came together. There are the climatic battles you’d expect,
but some huge twists along the way. The
battles in on the plain and in the palace are mesmerizing. Kagen and his army face terrifying threats
they never expected, cooked up by the Witch-King and the chaos-loving Prince of
Games, and get a hand from the enigmatic Widow and the Lady in the Towers,
Kagen’s lover and magical ally (and Tennyson’s muse). The third major battle,
on the oceans, gets a less detailed description. The intervention of dragons
and gods of legend is managed without making anything read like a deus ex machina,
and Kagen and his human friends remain the pivot on which history turns despite
these great powers. It’s a heck of a difficult balancing act, and Maberry pulls
it off. (He also does a cool fakeout in which one part of the battle you expect
never happens, raising the surprise quotient for the reader.) The end is satisfying and moving. As in Tolkien,
a world saved is not a world unchanged.
There are a few quirks along the way. The Widow summon
creatures we’ve barely heard of in armies. How did they all get to the battlefield
in a matter of an hour or so? And the ability to recover from injury is a bit
overplayed: a pileup of wounds at the beginning of the books seems to affect
the heroes not at all, and Kagen at the end should never have been able to wield
his daggers again.
Will we visit this world again? I hope so. Certainly, there’s
enough material. Maberry’s canvas has room for characters ranging from a pregnant
cat to the largest and oldest creature in the universe, and Chapter 171 teases
at a future conflict.
Picking up the Kagen novels will set a reader on a voyage for which the term “epic” is inadequate. It’s rich, filled, with memorable characters, and built on a world that feels real and organic: you see the spectacle but never the scaffolding. You’ll follow these characters with enthusiasm, feel their terrors, and cheer for a hero who’s brutal and ruthless but redeemed by his courage and devotion in the face of the unnamable. Don’t miss it.
Matt Bille is a science writer, novelist, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.
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