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Seven Forges

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 halfforgotten 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.

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