Seven Forges by James A Moore
The people of Fellein have lived with legends
for many centuries. To their far north, the Blasted Lands, a legacy of an
ancient time of cataclysm, are vast, desolate and impassable, but that doesn’t
stop the occasional expedition into their fringes in search of any trace of the
ancients who once lived there… and oft-rumoured riches.
Captain Merros Dulver is the first in many
lifetimes to find a path beyond the great mountains known as the Seven Forges
and encounter, at last, the half‐forgotten race who live
there. And it would appear that they were expecting him.
As he returns home, bringing an entourage of
the strangers with him, he starts to wonder whether his discovery has been such
a good thing. For the gods of this lost race are the gods of war, and their
memories of that far-off cataclysm have not faded.
Seven Forges is written by
James A. Moore, who has written to date over twenty novels in different genres
and several of them have received high claimed. James A Moore has also been
nominated twice for the Bram Stoker Award and has spent time in the Horror
Writers Association. He has also written for Marvel Comics as well as authoring
for role playing supplements for White Wolf Games. Pretty impressive if I must say
so. Seven Forges is his first Angry Robots Book out this October in the UK and
late September in the US.
After just having felt the
amazing rush of Three a few weeks back, I got offered to do Seven Forges and I
immediately jumped to the occasion. I have to admit that I have been reading
mostly contemporary fiction and was therefore looking forward to read a fantasy
story once again and Seven Forges fitted well into that category.
The introduction into Seven
Forges is just on big epic moment that you can readily translate to the big
screen. You first get to know Captain Merros Dulver who is fighting of a pack
of Pra-Moresh, huge vicious creature that have a tendency to appear in packs. He
encounter these creatures in his exploration across The Blasted Lands towards
the Seven Forges. This action packed start of the book already got me excited
for the remainder, as Merros soon receives help from an unexpected source, an
axe flying past his head. In this short introduction James A Moore pulled just
the right amount of strings to, on one level show enough of the world (mainly
here Merros and the unexpected source) but also leaves a lot to be found out
later. This unexpected source of help soon turns out to be the Sa’ba Taalor
people, and ancient warrior tribe that inhabit the rough lands of the Seven
Forges. From this point onwards the story really goes into a pacing of its own
and I must say that it isn’t your average fantasy pacing. Seven Forges reads
and feels different, fresh (I’m saying this in a good way), the whole book once
finished feels like and introduction to the universe where this story takes
place and that I, as a reader, only have glimpsed the tip of the iceberg or what
this epic story has in store.
As you can make out from the
synopsis, Merros brings a group of the Sa’ba Taalor back towards the Emperor of
Fellein and this is where it turns interesting and also where the story derives
its epic feel from. During the trek back from the Seven Forges mountain range
towards Fellein, you already get used to the customs of the Sa’ba Taalor
people, getting to know how direct they are and how battle ready at the spur of
the moment. And this only continues once they make it into town. But this is
really a cool feature of the book. It’s not only that the Sa’ba Taalor people
are battle hardened but they have a strong devotion towards their Gods, seven
in total, the Daxar Taalor. It was very cool to read about their devotion,
their rules and how they exact their believes upon the people of Fellein.
Already from the introduction of the Sa’bar Taalor into Fellein you can just
feel that there is a certain tension between them and the natives. And when it
escalates there are some pretty nice scenes.
Now from these Sa’ba Taalor
people, you do get to learn about a few in more detail and two really stood
out. Drask Silver Hand, he is the first of the Sa’ba Taalor you learn about, he
has as his name says, literally silver hands. This is where the forges part
makes it entrance. The Daxar Taalor are the gods of the forges and there was
already some revealings of this aspect. How Drask got his hands silverised in
the first place. This really brings a new way of looking at bare metals… later
also with the healing part, really neat stuff. But back to Drask, he is quite a
brute of character, but also not the barbarian attitude one might expect,
instead he makes every move with calculated caution and conversing with his
King Tuskandru, who believes mostly in a different god than Drask and thereby
does things quite differently. When you insult him, it will cost you dearly… Getting
to know the Sa’ba Taalor by these two character really provided and in-depth
sight into their society.
The Fellein people are more
typical your average people, well that is compared to the Sa’Ba Taalor. Their
lands are ruled by one Emperor but from the first pages I had a hunch that
though he has a final say in every matter it might have been someone else
pulling more of the strings in the Empire. I really liked the introduction of
the political intrigue here as it added another layer on the epic flair of
Seven Forges. There are several important players, just like the Sa’ba Taalor
in Fellein. The first is already mentioned above Captain Merros Dulver who
leads the expedition towards the seven forges in hope for success and when he
makes his safe return to live of his promised payment for the rest of his
years. Since Merros is travelling with Drask back to Fellein it is from his
point of view that you learn all the bits and pieces and how he reflects it
back on himself and his own people. It was good to read that he didn’t readily
accept the Sa’ba Taalor as his allies but that he still keeps his wits about
him. Not letting his guard down one bit. This reflects well back into his
strong, determined and convinced personality. Lastly I just briefly want to mention
Desh Kronan, adviser of the Emperor and who is for me one of the most enigmatic
characters that I have read about in a while. Desh is a sorcerer, so yes, there
is magic afoot in Seven Forges, on top of all the other good stuff I have
mentioned before! Desh is hard to interpret in terms of why he does certain
things and what he ulterior motives might be. He sorcerer aspect is cool to
read about and James A. Moore fully explores this in his own way giving quite a
mysterious notion about it. And even more so since he doesn’t let the magic
reign loosely throughout the book but it only appears in a few encounters. It
seems that Desh knows a lot more than he might lead others to believe. And
another cool feature of him is that a lot of the people of Fellein see him as a
charlatan. So he does have a bit of an underdog position there. Ok well, I
totally forgot another character. So this is the last one! Andovar. He is
brutally harmed, and Desh has one solution to give him his missing things back.
But this doesn’t come without any consequences for Andovar. Andovar is now
thrown in between the Sa’ba Taalor and his allegiance to the Emperor. I didn’t
really get to learn much about what is in store for Andovar but I have high,
high hopes for his character development as the series when the story will
start to progress.
If you think this is all? A
diplomatic story about the Sa’ba Taalor, their introduction to Fellein and
making a new alliance, your wrong. On a side-track in the story there starts to
unfold a much more pressing matter. Now I have to admit that the first part of
the book narrowly focuses on the relation between the Sa’ba Taalor and Fellein.
The side-track was already set in motion and in the last part of the book you
get to find out what it might be. I’m not going to mention what the next book
might bring into the story but I liked how James A. Moore neatly started to
peel off a second layer of the story. Thereby partly showing that either the
Sa’ba Taalor are much more than first presumed or that there is a second threat
to the empire. Seven Forges is a perfect story of political intrigue, brutal
fighting, beguiling magic and assassinations.
As you can understand from
the parts written about Seven Forges I think you can safely say that I “quite” (read
absolutely, fully, thoroughly) liked the book. Along the storyline you see a
lot starting to unfold, plotwise and a possible continuation of the series. I
finished this book in the morning, later that day when I picked up a new book I
just couldn’t focus on it, still had the thoughts of Seven Forges in my mind,
and even now a few days past, it still nestled in there. The build up of Seven
Forges was done in an excellent way with first a heavy emphasis on the
characters and the obscure Sa’ba Taalor and later neatly shifting the focus
onto another developing storyline, but still keeping the exploration of the
world at the front. Integrating a this new developing storyline in the main one
was done neatly and left me thinking that only the top of the surface has been
broached so far. Seven Forges has the WOW factor.