Thank you Angry Robot Books, via Netgalley for allowing me to read The Traitor Godby Cameron Johnston in exchange for an honest review
A city threatened by unimaginable horrors must trust their most hated outcast, or lose everything, in this crushing epic fantasy debut.
After ten years on the run, dodging daemons and debt, reviled magician Edrin Walker returns home to avenge the brutal murder of his friend. Lynas had uncovered a terrible secret, something that threatened to devour the entire city. He tried to warn the Arcanum, the sorcerers who rule the city. He failed. Lynas was skinned alive and Walker felt every cut. Now nothing will stop him from finding the murderer. Magi, mortals, daemons, and even the gods – Walker will burn them all if he has to. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s killed a god…
Publication Date: June 05, 2018
What drew me towards The Traitor Gods was initially the cover; I mean, it’s beautifully illustrated, and it’s so interesting. There’s so much to look at! The second thing that drew me towards this novel was the title: The Traitor God. The title alone sparks my imagination. I can honestly say that when the title drop happened, I did not expect it to happen in the way it did!
Cameron Johnston returns in this innovative space fantasy, where wizards race to be the first on the moon – also known as the land of the gods. A fast paced read perfect for fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Ella Pickering is drowning in debt. Once a Unity skymage trained to make aerial supply runs in the great war with the Ranneas Empire, following a crash she now uses a wheelchair and works gruelling shifts making magical weapons in the Unity workshops, thinking of better days.
One night Ella witnesses an experiment by engineer Jackan Grissom go awry. His device morphs into a crude rocket blasting skywards before falling into the war’s spell-ravaged No Man’s Land. But this inspires a dangerous dream: could such a device reach the moon – the forbidden home of the gods? Could they go and beg them to stop the war?
They will need help, but as more folk get involved in their blasphemous plot, can they keep it under wraps? Can magic get them to the moon? Or will their heresy lead them to the gallows?
Liz Bourke Reviews The Maleficent Seven by Cameron Johnston
April 30, 2021 Liz Bourke
’d never heard of Cameron Johnston before I received a review copy of his The Maleficent Seven, due out from Angry Robot. Its pitch is “fantasy Magnificent Seven, but everyone’s a villain,” and while I don’t normally enjoy a book that’s all about bad people doing bad things, this one works surprisingly well.
For one thing, it has a sense of humour.
Forty years ago, dread demonologist Black Herren, at the head of a mighty army, was on the verge of conquering the entire continent. Then, abruptly, she decided that her priorities had been a little skewed. Abandoning her army and her (dread, terrible, not very good at co-operating without fear of her) captains to squabble amongst themselves, she retired to a small village – where she’s raised her child and grandchildren and spun her long-term plots ever since. But now a new army, led by the divinely touched Falcon Prince and full of zealots, is conquering the land, eradicating all worship of other gods, and Black Herren’s village of Tarnbrooke is in its line of march. What’s an elderly demonologist to do but get the dreadful band back together? And she has some information the most terrible of her old captains, the necromancer Maeven, wants. At least for now.
Maeven wants a lot of things. Not least of which is to fill up her little black necromantic knife (every necromancer’s favourite accessory) with powerful souls, in order to reclaim the one thing she actually cares about – her sister, Grace – from her much-hated brother Amadden. Some of Black Herren’s old captains might do very well as fuel. But she has to recruit them first, starting with the old-school oaths-and-honour-and-vicious-murder vampire lord Lorimer Felle, and going on to include the ex-war-god Tiarnach – committer and survivor of genocide; the brutal orc warrior, now chieftain, Amogg Hadakk (a charismatic figure from a people whose customs are violent and alien); Verena Awildan, family woman and ruthless pirate queen; and alchemist Jerak Hyden, an egotistical horror of a scientist who’d burn the world if he thought he could make cool shit with the ashes, or maybe just to measure how long it would take. Also in the cast: doomed lordling Laurant Daryn, who marches with the Lucent Empire and finds his lack of belief in their cause replaced with unnatural fervour, and Penny, a Tarnbrooke villager who unwittingly impresses Amogg with her courage and gets taken under the orc’s wing for the battles to come.
And oh, there are battles. First the battles to recruit the whole band, and then the battle for Tarnbrooke, and finally Black Herren’s long-awaited battle for supremacy, but if I tell you who that battle’s with, it’ll ruin the surprise. Coarse, crude, bloody, brutal, and utterly over-the-top: The Maleficent Seven reminds me of nothing so much as one of those horror films that leans so hard into the blood and guts and banter that it stops being horrifying and becomes comic. It helps that all of these horrible people are humanised: they have human connections and human cares, even if they’re largely selfish (Jerak Hyden being the monstrous exception). It helps, too, that The Maleficent Seven has a sense of humour, a go-big-or-go-home delight in playing with entertaining villains and doomed last stands.
This is no one’s redemption, but it is an entertaining ride.
Title: The Maleficent Seven.Writer(s): Cameron Johnston.
Publisher: Angry Robot.Format: Digital.Release Date: August 10th 2021.Pages: 400.Genre(s): Fantasy.ASIN: B08N6TX8LN.
My Overall Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
How does one reconcile with someone after being betrayed? Can their common interests pave the way towards solidarity? Can they allow themselves to forgive one another, move…
