Revolutions are Ignited With Blood - A Review of The Armored Saint

[kamreadsandrecs]

The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This review is based on an ARC given to me for free by the publisher, Tor.Com Publishing. This does not, in any way, affect my review. The Armored Saint is slated for release on February 20, 2018.

Coincidences are a fascinating aspect of life. When they are positive, they can be thrilling; when they are negative, they can be outright horrifying. Some people think they are a sign of divine guidance, that some great being has their hand upon the universe and is guiding it towards some unknown destiny. Those who believe in no such thing just shrug their shoulders and insist that it’s just the human brain making connections where no such connections exist, adding that “correlation does not imply causation.”

Whether or not one takes coincidences as a divine message, they are still fascinating, and still powerful. For instance: this book, The Armored Saint by Myke Cole, is scheduled for release on February 20, 2018. Two days later, on February 22 to 25, my country will be celebrating the 32nd anniversary of the People Power Revolution, which ousted Ferdinand Marcos and his family from power. Despite being peaceful in nature, however, the EDSA Revolution (as it is more commonly called here in the Philippines) was ignited by blood: specifically, that of Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who was assassinated on August 21, 1983. Though the People Power Revolution has been lauded as one of the greatest nonviolent protests in history, and has provided the inspiration for many other, similar protests since, denying its violent roots would be disingenuous.

Coincidentally, The Armored Saint is about revolutions, and how they start. First in the Sacred Throne series, it tells the story of Heloise Factor: a sixteen-year-old girl who spends most of her days assisting her father, Samson, as he sees about his work preparing various documents and letters for the residents of their home village, Lutet, and the other neighbouring villages. For the most part, her life has been normal: follow the Writ, help her father, and spend every free minute she can get with Basina Tinker, whom she considers her best friend but might be something more, Heloise is not sure.

All of that changes, however, the moment Heloise and her father encounter a group of Pilgrims while on the road to the village of Hammersdown. That encounter spirals out into a series of events that completely alters Heloise’s understanding of her world - and of her place in it.

This is the first work by Myke Cole that I’ve read. I’ve been thinking of reading his Shadow Ops books, since I do enjoy a good urban fantasy, but I haven’t been able to track them all down just yet, even though I already have all the books to the associated Reawakening trilogy. Either way, I have heard many good things about his writing, and so decided to take the plunge into his work with this book, even though I did so mostly blind.

And I have to say, Cole’s writing is quite the pleasure to read. It goes by at a good fast clip - so much so that this book feels a lot shorter than I expected it to. I could be judging the length incorrectly, but this feels like a novella, as opposed to a full-length novel - there is just something about it that does not feel like a full-length novel to me. I managed to blast through it in the course of two days of non-concentrated reading (I was reading it while at work); had I been allowed uninterrupted reading time, I’m certain I could have finished it in one sitting, as I often do with novellas.

(Of course, this feeling could also be because I’ve just come off of Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer, which at a hundred-plus chapters spread across a thousand-plus pages is quite the doorstopper and, therefore, may have temporarily distorted my notions of what qualifies as “short” or “long” when it comes to the books I read.)

Do not think, however, that the length is a mark against this book - far from it. It’s just not quite as long as I expected it to be. When it comes to fantasy novels I generally expect there to be quite a bit of world-building, but in this instance there isn’t a lot of that at all - or at least, not the kind that takes up a lot of space to get done. Cole does indeed build the world of this story, but does so in what I call the “sink or swim” style, by which I mean: the world-building is done through plot events and the characters themselves reacting to and interacting with their world. It’s not the easiest kind of world-building, both on the writer and the reader, but if done right, it can be a splendid way of creating a new world without losing the momentum of the plot. Also helpful is that Cole’s world is more-or-less familiar to most readers of fantasy and even to people who play video games: it is a fairly standard European medieval grimdark world, much like Westeros in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. This is familiar territory, and therefore gives Cole the freedom to focus less on world-building and on other things instead - like, for instance, the characters.

And speaking of characters, they are a fascinating bunch, though not always to the same degree. For instance, I find many of the side characters interesting to read about: Samson and his friends, especially, because it’s clear that there is a story behind how they all became friends and came to live in the same village, and I would like to see that story told, eventually.

And then there is Heloise. On one hand, I find her mildly irritating, but on the other hand I also understand that my irritation comes from the fact that Heloise is still sixteen - a teenager. She reacts to things the way any young woman of that age would: on impulse, and according to her feelings, not her head. This leads her to do and say things that, in more ways than one, help to precipitate the events in the story’s climax. Those events break her, true, but they do not break her totally. That is something I find very interesting indeed - not least because this is clearly a grimdark story, and usually grimdark stories don’t leave much room for hope. And yet there it is, a small spark in Heloise’s spirit that continues to burn despite the growing dark. I am very much looking forward to seeing what becomes of her, and her altered circumstances change the world around her.

As for the villains, they actually remind me of the Templars in the Dragon Age series of role-playing video games by Bioware. In fact, the use and policing of magic in those video games shares many similarities to the way magic is used and policed in this book - right down to the fanatical Order that tries to control magic-users for its own, sometimes legitimate, but often shady and always brutal, ends. Similarities aside, though, Brother Tone and the rest of the members of the Order feel a little bit flat; they are threatening, to be sure, and dangerous without a doubt, and all of those things are evil, but I hope that their evil gets a bit more nuance in the sequels. Evil has depth to it, after all, and I enjoy a complex antagonist as much as I enjoy a complex protagonist. With Heloise going in an interesting direction in terms of character development, I hope that her antagonists do the same.

Overall, The Armored Saint is a promising start to what will, hopefully, be a great new fantasy series. The story goes by more quickly than expected, and though the world-building feels minimal it is solid enough to support the weight of the characters and plot inhabiting it. As for the characters, they are also very promising, though most of that promise will likely have to be fulfilled in the sequels. This is just the starting point, after all; seeing what happens to those characters and how they grow will just have to happen in the sequels. And I must admit, I am thoroughly excited to see where they go.