Seven Blades in Black - Sam Sykes

Seven Blades in Black is the start of a new fantasy series from Sam Sykes, who has form in the area of smart, character focused fantasy. Well, this book takes that form, and turns it up to eleven.

Sal the Cacophany is a bounty hunter, and a killer, and a woman with quite a lot on her mind. Mostly where to get the next drink from, and who, in her personal list of targets, to hunt down next.
Sal is also a fast hand with a gun, which is just as well, because her enemies – of which there are a great, great many – are powerful, magical, fierce, and deadly. Which, given she’s a woman with a gun and a bad attitude, means she has to be at least twice as quick as they are, just to stay alive.

Sal is an absolute wonder, and a horror. She’s obviously intelligent, masking behind a quietly folksy demeanour a determination and focus that could cut through steel like warm butter. But at the same time, there’s a lot that’s human in there. Sal is seeking revenge, and she has a list of people whom she has to kill to put things right. Quite what that revenge is for? Well, it’ll come out over the course of the text. What also comes out is Sal’s humanity. Sure, as we find ourselves observing a weapon of a woman, with a gun that fires shells with some very interesting properties, and a willingness to do almost anything to get the job done – we thing we know that woman. Sal the Cacophany, who bestrides her world as a rumour, a quiet voice, a silence in your skull. A myth, and a killer. But she’s also a woman who is able to feel friendship, to feel love, to feel connection to everything around her. The story gives her room to express that pain in the present, to let us feel for a woman living with some of her choices, and maybe making new, possibly worse ones. But another strand of the narrative takes us into her past, shows us a woman shaping herself, and the choices that brought her where she is now – in a wasteland, tracking down a cabal of lunatic wizards, one by one.

This is Sal’s story, and I won’t spoil it by telling it her. But I will say this.. Sal the Cacophany is a fractured, lethal bundle of smarting-off and fragile razor edges. A person who thinks they have nothing to lose, and is willing to give up on having anything else to feel like they can make that loss end.

It’s not all doom, gloom and revenge though. Did I mention the folksy charm? Sal has a wonderful voice, which is just as well, as the framing device lets her tell her own story. It has a slow drawl to it, and an immediacy and honesty of emotion and motive which leaves her feeling unflinching and real. But in that story, Sal is also her façade – a woman with a brain, not afraid to use it, willing to take any advantage, and unwilling to apologise for being herself. Also she’s fun. The refusal to bow in the face fo fear, sure. The almost anti-nobility of purpose, sure. But In between, there are the human moments – a cracked joke, a hug, a burgeoning friendship – which kept me turning pages, and which keep Sal grounded in her world.

Sal is a lot of fun to watch, running around, casting aspersions on the baddies, and trying to kill them. She does, no doubt, kick arse. And the action, when it comes, is frenetic and kinetic. But because of the human links, because of the way that the author has made Sal come alive, along with her friends, her loves and her losses – because of those human stakes, we care about the woman spitting epithets in the face of a magical storm, we care about the woman trying to drop the hammer on those she wants to see dead. We even care about those enemies, when they get up close and personal. This is a book which will give you all the intrigue and explosions you could wish for, but it’s Sal’s book, a book about people, and about the way they feel.

I mean, also it’s about mages blowing the living crap out of each other. And about politics. And about lost love and lost innocence and lost illusions, and about the crafting of emotional armour and about the lies we tell ourselves to stay sane, to stay alive. Sure, it’s all of those things. But at its heart is Sal the Cacophany, whose humanity makes it all work, and makes us care.

Sal lives in a broken world, a world where mages were once kings of everything they saw before them. A world where their servants rose up to overthrow their masters. And where those servants aligned themselves with powers and morals which might be even worse. While Sal is the individual face of loss and the cost of struggle, and of the necessity, sometimes, that drives us forward – around her, a war is playing out. It’s a hopeless, total war, whose only result seems to be the slow, grinding destruction of everything in grudges and blood. But as a backdrop, it’s a very compelling one. There’s a universe at play here, and we only see fragments of it – the alchemists who live for knowledge and construct devices and desires of their own devising. The blind priests and their hounds looking for wizards. The bargain every mage makes for his power, and the cost they pay. The rumbling mechanisms of the revolution, and the ethical dilemmas that people who don’t make decisions have to decide if they can live with.

It’s a vividly broken world, sure enough. One with the dry dust feel of a western, with Sal the Cacophany, legend, mage-killer, slouching along within it, with a magical six-iron on her hip, and a rather nice hat. It’s a world which you’ll live and breathe, as Sal kicks in doors, fights for herself, fights for others. As she tosses the dice between her revenge and the connections she’s made, the love she feels. As she tries to save the world and herself, one bullet at a time.

So what is it? It’s a fast-paced, arse-kicking magical western, with bullets that spit fire, and demons that will break your soul. It’s the story of wizards and revolutions, ad the way that conflicts spiralling out of control will affect those who just want to stay alive, and those who don’t know the cost of the choices they’ll be asked to make until it’s too late. It’s Sal’s story, a human story of life and love, possible redemption and possible revenge. It’s a compelling page turner which will keep your eyes on the page wanting to know what happens next.

It’s really rather a good book, is what I’m saying. I, for one, look forward to hearing more. In the meantime, I recommend you give Seven Blades in Black a try.