So, War Cry. It’s a new novella from Brian McClellan, whose
flintlock fantasy ‘Powder Mage’ series
has taken the world by storm.
War Cry is an introduction to a new series, a new world. It
has new characters, and new secrets to discover. Is it any good though? Well,
yes, actually. It really is. The short version is, this is a tautly plotted war
story with enough steady characterisation to keep you reading, and enough cool
bits that you’ll want to.
The long version starts here. It starts in a world devastated
by war, and tired of conflict. It’s a small world, granted. Just a few
kilometres across. But that’s enough for a team of military scouts, lurking in
a camp in barren, rough terrain, keeping an eye on an enemy they’ve never found
a reason not to hate. This is a world which lives in a war that, for its
inhabitants, has no end. They’ve grown up with war, they’ve lived with war,
they’re fighting a war, and they fully expect to either die in combat or later,
with the conflict rumbling on in the background. The mood evoked is one of
exhaustion, seeping off the page in draughts of crappy coffee and all-nighters.
There’s a sense in there, too, that this is a war old enough that no-one can
remember why it happened, or how to stop it. Everyone seems tiredly resigned to
the conflict grinding on, and their resignation seeps through the text. This is
a place where everyone is performing their duties by rote, where blood and
death are a matter of procedure, rather than ideology.
The environment is interesting as well. There’s something in
the biplanes, in the geography of quiet plains and mountains which recalls the
Spanish civil war, and the sense of wide open spaces backed by plunging heights
is one which will stick with me for a while.
Into this space march the strange and unknowable; the
Changers are monsters, killers, able to turn into something more and less than
human. The Shining Tom’s, a last survivor of a different, less conflict-driven
world, wield illusion like a knife, hiding aircraft, supplies, armies on the
march. This is a world tired of war, to be sure, but it’s also rather good at
it – and that professionalism wars with a sense of fatigue, to give us
something which feels real – not the ra-ra patriotism of a TV advert, but the
feeling of people dragging themselves out of an uncomfortable bed every day to
do what they feel they must. It’s a job, a job backed by a long tarnished
ideal, and by necessity.
Into that job walks Teado. He’s a Changer. A monster. A
killer. A man trying to figure out what the point of it all is, bemoaning the
crappy coffee and debating whether its worth springting over the border and
seeking asylum with the enemy. Teado has a sense of singular purpose about him,
but that purpose is now riven with doubt, in the face of a long, grinding war
where ideals have long ago given way to mud and blood. Still, he has a
refreshing honesty behind the fatigue – loyal to his squad, to the friends they’ve
now become. Acerbically cynical about the war and its causes, but
fatalistically accepting of a rle within it. Teado carries the sense of a
veteran about him, as do his team – and if he’s special for is powers, they
think no less of him for that.
Make no mistake, this is a war story, an introduction to a
world steeped in a long running national grudge match. But it’s not a story
where force of arms and glorious charges win the day, but one where individuals
are doing their very best to survive, and perhaps incidentally, to win. Teados
squad are a delightful pack of individuals – a superior broken by tragedy, a
hardened colleague, a flyer obsessed with his machine, an illusionist trying to
work out who they could be in another, quieter life. In their mundane concerns and their passionate
responses, they help carry and convince Teado as human.
The plot – well, it rattles along at a good pace. There’s
excitement, adventure and high stakes derring-do. There’s battles, for sure.
There’s blood and guts and the sort of emotional punch that leaves you wanting
to have a quiet drink and a think about what it means to be people. There’s
thoughtful subtext about the shapes of conflict and they way it resolves. And
also there’s magical war-lizards, illusionists and bombing raids.
This is a fearless, imaginative, scintillating work of
fantasy, with some intriguing ideas, expressed with a sense of wonder. I’d say
it’s more than recommended as a stand-alone, and also worth keeping an eye on
as the start of a larger world. I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens
next
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