I bought this because the title made me smile and the cover shouted: NOT YOUR STANDARD D&D DERIVED FANTASY. The publisher’s summary was intriguing but not necessarily reassuring. They gave up on trying to précis the novel and went with he’s a successful fantasy author already and a longish paraphrasing of the start of the book. Here’s their pitch:

From the bestselling author of THE GREATCOATS and SPELLSLINGER: seven war mages with dark pasts and special powers must come together to fight an unknown enemy—but the stakes are higher than anyone can imagine . . . and someone’s setting them up for a fall.

‘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 warned: 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 . .

My concern was that it might turn out to be an extended one-line joke, delivered as a ‘see how cool we are?‘ pastiche of well-worn Sword and Sorcery tropes. I knew that that wouldn’t hold my attention for 395 pages. Fortunately, Sebastien de Castell knew that too and delivered a novel with a lot more to offer than a bit of snark.

He devised a system of magic that sounded as feasible as any system of magic can to someone who doesn’t believe in magic. Mages are born with an attunement to a nearby dimension that allows them to draw power from that dimension and weaponise it (I’m sure they could do other things with it but these guys LIKE weaponising their power). The type of power wielded depends on the dimension the mage is attuned to but most of them can be used to kill people in large numbers and blow stuff up like once-believed-to-be-impenetrable castle walls. Each mage is a walking Weapon Of Mass Destruction.

Weapons are only valuable to the people who wield them. In this case, the weapons are being deployed in a proxy war between the Celestials and the Diabolics. Don’t judge them by their names. Both sides are happy to fight a proxy war, spreading death and destruction across a world that they can’t even enter, because of some eternal feud.

The style of writing is unusual. Think Grimdark with a guilty conscience and a taste for ironic, self-deprecating humour. The novel abounds in violence, rape, abuse, cruelty and pointless but gleeful slaughter. What makes this not quite Grimdark is that our moody and soulful ‘do NOT call me a hero’ main character, Cade Ombra tortures himself with how bad he’s become, how broken the world is and how betrayed he feels by all people and institutions he once committed his life to. It doesn’t help that he can’t get his power by drawing from another dimension. He has to get his spells by bartering with a demon and living with the price.

While I liked the style of the book, I was glad to find that there was more to it than that. There is an actual plot. Things are not (at all) what they seem. There’s even some development for the characters (at least the ones that make it to the end without being killed in horrible ways.) with some people becoming easier to like, some impossible not to hate and some becoming even more themselves.

This was an entertaining read with some great action scenes, lots of good ideas, a few plot twists and a great deal of style.