Bookworm Speaks!- In Thunder Forged by Ari Marmell
Bookworm Speaks!
In Thunder Forged: Iron Kingdoms Chronicles (The Fall of Llael)
by Ari Marmell
****
Acquired: Barnes and Noble Booksellers
Series: The Fall of Llael
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Pyr (June 4, 2013)
Language: English
****
The Story: The first novel based upon the award-winning WARMACHINE® steam-powered fantasy wargame and the world of the Iron Kingdoms® Role Playing Game is an action-packed steam-tech fantasy that combines elements of epic wartime adventure with thrilling cloak-and-dagger espionage.
The Iron Kingdoms are at war--a war fought with machine guns and magic, knights of valor, and earth shaking titans of steam and steel. And now that war may hinge entirely on nothing more than a sheaf of papers.
An alchemical formula, stolen by an ally they thought they could trust, could cost the brave soldiers of Cygnar everything. Their only hope: a cunning spy, a knight out of her element, and a frighteningly small unit of the best that Cygnar has to offer.
Arrayed against them is not only a single, devious enemy, but the combined intelligence apparatus--and possibly the full military might--of the most brutal martial power Cygnar has ever known.
The Review: While Bookworm had not heard of the Warmachine RPG franchise until the purchase of this book. It really was the setting that convinced him to purchase this book and give it a read.
The setting showed a lot of promise: a world at war, swords and blunderbusses, alchemy and magic, and the biggest appeal of all: giant, mechanical mechs. It all looked amazing!
Unfortunately, this big promise falls flat during the execution.
The centerpiece of this whole universe appears to be the Warjacks, the bipedal war machines animated through magic. They even appear on the franchise logo. While they definitely appear frequently, they appear to take place mostly in the background, leaving most of the focus on the human characters.
Some would make the reasonable argument that is the right way to write such a book. All too often…science fiction and fantasy get so bogged down in the minutiae of how their world works that the most important aspect of any story, the characters and plot, get brushed to the side.
That is exactly what happens in this book but still…Its like Chekov’s gun. You put a giant robot on the cover, so we need a giant robot battle! The fulfillment of such went by in an anticlimactic manner.
What we got instead just appeared to be another medieval-esque espionage.
That is the ultimate main flaw of this book: It doesn’t feel different. While possessing more fantasy elements than others, this book does fall under the category of steampunk and while Bookworm has read and enjoyed a lot of steampunk, he can’t help but notice that a lot of it is the same. While this book may not take place in Victorian England, it does take place in Industrial Revolution Europe and Europe has been done to death in regards to speculative fiction.
The Spy Thriller angle doesn’t flow very well either. As its been said…we’ve seen a lot of this before. Assassinations, double crossings, and betrayals, all very, very familiar. It honestly gets a little boring in between the action scenes. The assassin character while to the books credit is a strong female, is so bland that honestly Bookworm had trouble remembering anything about her.
More cynical readers could go as far to say that the whole text is just a cash grab by the gaming company to be produced cheaply in order to hook more readers. Bookworm likes to think there is more heart to it than that.
It is a shame that the second book got cancelled though. It would have been nice to see where this was all leading up too.
This book has plenty of good qualities though. The fact that its main character is a woman already sets it apart from a great majority of popular fiction which has been the domain of the Y chromosome for decades.
From a pure action standpoint the war may be a bit of a letdown but the truth is that, what the reader sees is a realistic depiction of war. The titanic clashes of arms are only part of it, a great part of war is the chess matches. Where several players make smaller moves as part of a much larger game. Its back and forth, over and around and can be very dramatic.
The world that is built has its interesting facets. How the warjacks are built would be something Bookworm would really like to know. Bookworm would also like to see two gunmages face off in later volumes.
Final Verdict: As an introduction to a gaming franchise, there are worse ways to pull it off than ‘In Thunder Forged.’ It is an interesting book that shows us this new world, but despite all the richness of the setting, it may not bring enough new stuff to be all that interesting.
Three Cogs out of Five
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