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Forgedby Benedict Jacka Mass Market Paperback, 294 pg. Read: December 17-22, 2020 |
The whole time I read this, I kept thinking, “How do I write something about this?” More than a month and a half later, I’m still not sure.
Book Blurb
I’m so unsure what to say, that I’m not even going to attempt to summarize the setup. I’ll just steal the back of the book:
To protect his friends, Mage Alex Verus has had to change–and embrace his dark side. But the life mage Anne has changed too, and made a bond with a dangerous power. She’s going after everyone she’s got a grudge against–and it’s a long list.
In the meantime, Alex has to deal with his arch-enemy, Levistus. The Council’s death squads are hunting Alex as well as Anne, and the only way for Alex to stop them is to end his long war with Levistus and the Council, by whatever means necessary. It will take everything Alex has to stay a step ahead of the Council and stop Anne from letting the world burn.
Not Quite Fully-Formed Thoughts
I was blown away by the first novel in this series, Fated back in ’12. The cover caught my eye, the pull-quote from Jim Butcher on the front put it in my checkout stack at the Library. I was impressed enough that I bought the paperback almost immediately. And the series has been an auto-buy for me since. Here we are at the penultimate novel and so much of my loss for words is attributable to not knowing what he’s going to do with the events of this book.
Yes, it’s a complete story—we even get introduced to a new character. But I’m not sure what any of the events will actually mean for Alex/the series, so my judgment feels like it’s in limbo. If he does X, Y, or Z in Risen, well, sure it’ll be worth it. But if he goes in another direction…I just don’t know.
I’ve read four Urban Fantasy series from start to conclusion. Anna Strong, The Hollows,* Kitty Norville, and The Iron Druid Chronicles. If you stand back and take in the series as a whole, the first three had a very similar arc, and the IDC had a different one. It sure seems like Jacka’s taking a more IDC approach. If I’m right, that puts things in the last couple of books in a certain kind of light, and I can evaluate them on that basis. If I’m wrong (to some extent) it puts those things in a different light, and I’ll think about them differently. At the moment the book is in a pretty “is the dress white and gold or black and blue” kind of place for me. I don’t usually say that kind of thing about a book, I normally know what I think about a book without wondering too much about the future of the sequel/series. But I can’t help it this time, even if it feels like a cop-out.
Which is not to say that I think there’s a superior way for Jacka to land this plane—I’m confident he’s going to nail the landing regardless.
* Yeah, sure, that was temporarily concluded, but let’s pretend that Harrison didn’t come back for the sake of this paragraph
So, can I say anything? Yeah. This was the most violent of any of the books, Alex knows full well that this is the endgame for something, and has nothing holding him back. I’m sure that in many ways the Alex Verus of the early series wouldn’t do what he’s doing now, and wouldn’t want to. But things have changed him, and he doesn’t have time to waste pulling his punches.
Alex is running out of choices—an odd thing for a diviner. He’s burnt a lot of bridges lately—many of which I held out hope that he could repair. Instead, he burnt them to the ground, gathered the ashes, stomped on them, and then scattered them to the four winds. I’m not sure that he has a whole lot of moves left—if Alex is the King on a chessboard, it truly seems he’ll be checkmated in just a couple of moves.
I enjoyed this book, I don’t particularly like the choices that Alex is making—but I get why he’s making them. I don’t particularly like the choices Jacka’s making, either—but I think he’s probably doing the right thing for the series.
I’m not sure what else to say, really. Come back this fall after Risen and I’ll probably be a bit more definitive.
There was another realisation too, something that was harder to explain. I had the feeling that Morden was going to survive all this. He wasn’t aiming to settle grudges and wasn’t seeking the crown, and because of that everyone else would always have someone they wanted dead more badly than him. When this was over he was going to be walking away, back to the forests and streams of his shadow realm and to his new group of disciples. The same wasn’t likely to be true for me.
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