Blood of Innocents by Mitchell Hogan

[calissa]

Published: January 2016 by Harper Voyager
Format reviewed: Trade paperback, 578 pages
Series: Sorcery Ascendant Sequence #2
Genres: Fantasy, epic fantasy
Source: Harper Voyager
Reading Challenges: Once Upon A Time X
Available: Abbey’s ~ Amazon ~ Book Depository ~ Booktopia ~ Dymocks ~ Kobo

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This review contains spoilers for previous volumes/books.

Anasoma, jewel of the Mahruse Empire, has fallen.

As orphaned, monk-raised Caldan and his companions flee the city, leaving behind their hopes for a new beginning, horrors from the time of the Shattering begin to close in.

With Miranda’s mind broken by forbidden sorcery, Caldan does the unthinkable to save her: he breaks the most sacrosanct laws of the Protectors. But when the emperor’s warlocks arrive to capture him, Caldan realizes that his burgeoning powers may be more of a curse than a blessing, and the enemies assailing the empire may be rivaled by more sinister forces within.

And soon, the blood of innocents may be on Caldan’s own hands.

Blood of Innocents is a disappointing follow-up to A Crucible of Souls. The characterisation is shallow and the pacing slow.

The book follows the grimdark trend of epic fantasy in that almost all of the characters are unlikeable and act selfishly. Bells is biding her time to make her escape, Amerdan is on the lookout for his next victim and Elpidia is obsessed with curing her mysterious disease. Even Caladan is looking to assuage his guilt over Miranda’s brain damage and to avoid the punishment he knows is going to come from disobeying the laws of the Protectors. This dim view of humanity creates a world in which Caladan is hailed as a hero when he finally does something that’s purely altruistic.

Many of my criticisms of the previous book remain and are even reinforced. Caladan continues to be a Gary Stu character and although there are hints that there is an explanation for this, they haven’t been developed beyond what was offered in the first book. Perhaps Caladan’s angst over killing for the first time was meant to balance it out, but it comes across much like Bella’s clumsiness in Twilight in that it has no real or lasting impact on his actions. I also found his use of Miranda to justify his actions was distasteful.

Speaking of which, the representation of female characters continues to be poor–perhaps even more so than the first book. The number of female characters isn’t great and once again a disproportionate number meet ugly fates. Miranda spends the entire novel in a fugue state, serving as an obstacle as the group flees Anasoma and so that Caladan has someone to pine over. Felice is the most interesting of the female characters, having a modicum of authority. However, it ends up being taken away from her and of course all the ultimate authorities are men. Apparently, confusing the reader with two emperors is preferable to including an empress. It was also disappointing that there’s never a sense of Felice beyond her role–no real indication of what she’s like as a person, what her likes and dislikes are.

The book doesn’t even work well as a swords and sorcery story, being bogged down with descriptions and explanations of every instance of magic. Information and opinions are often repeated, slowing the pace of the story.

Obviously, Blood of Innocents was not my cup of tea. Readers looking for a good epic fantasy are better off trying Jennifer Fallon’s The Lyre Thief.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Comments

[onewhitecrow]

Possibly the worst approach when writing a dark/antihero is authorial justification of their sins...if you're going to be bad, y'know, be bad. If it's a mistake, learn from it and don't take forgiveness for granted.

Tangentally related, have I bounced at you at all about the game system I found for my backburner Siberian survival horror project yet?

[calissa]

The problem is that the central character isn't supposed to be dark or an antihero. I think the intent was more of a traditional hero's journey--friendless orphan goes on to save the world, that sort of thing. Perhaps all the angsting over killing people was supposed to make him seem like he has a conscience? Especially because he was only doing it to protect the love of his life, whom he has known maybe a week and managed to render helpless through accidental brain damage. *eyeroll*

I don't think you mentioned the game system. What have you found?

[onewhitecrow]

[snerk] I probably shouldn't laugh at the "suddenly declare eternal love, clumsily bash the poor girl's head in" thing, but it's too funny...got the potential (not that I think it'll be used, but there) for an interesting story about being truly in love with someone severely mentally disabled: the balance of power and the inglorious aspects of loyal love, which means dealing with inarticulate fits of distress and cleaning up nasty puddles. The whole "but he's sad about murder" bit sounds like protagonist-centred morality in play. Frikkin' Sues.

[bouncebounce] Shadow Theory, an indie d20 mod that takes a base of CoC and turns it into "a mixture of I Am Legend and Silent Hill." Thing is, though, its Sanity track explicitly covers stress and considers anti-social actions 'insane', because humans are inherently social. It doesn't force you to do/not do anything, but the mechanic makes the cruel a bit more like the monsters, and that makes me ee. Morality as an explicit survival tactic.

[calissa]

It was a magic accident rather than bashing her head in, but it seems like a moot point and was definitely a case of frikkin' Sues.

Ooo... I like the sound of that. Is the project still on the backburner?

[onewhitecrow]

I'm not sure if bibbitybobbety*BLAM* might be even funnier than *BONK*. Poor Designated Love Interest.

I'm sloooowly doing prep (and designing monsters!), but it'll take at least until the CoC game I'm in has simmered down a bit (my private detective is currently attempting to sic the Mafia on Yellow Sign cultists because he thinks the secret goings-on is drug smuggling, it is high entertainment) and I work out what chunk of my time is reasonable to devote to a quasi-Pathfinder game I was invited to and agreed in a moment of everything-else-is-stalled boredom (I'm still dubious, but the fact I've managed to stat up the agoraphobic Druid I rolled up on the 'WTF is my D&D character' generator makes me at least willing to try). I'd also like to be a little less hopelessly incompetent as a GM before attempting something so grand and complex, but that's unlkely to happen any time soon.

Would you like to know when/if I finally get 'round to running the game? I'd provide setting notes and support, so colonists, prisoners and natives are all theoretically playable.

[calissa]

My schedule is looking a bit jam-packed at the moment, but I'd be interested in hearing from you when you get started.

I'm running an RPG for my writing group tonight, so am staring down the barrel of the "hopelessly incompetent GM" fear at the moment. I'm not sure whether that fear ever really goes away, judging from my sweetheart after his... twenty years of GMing. (Goodness, has it been that long?)

An agoraphobic Druid sounds like quite a challenge!

[onewhitecrow]

Trust me, it won't be for a good while yet. As in autumn, maybe. Will do, though.

Oh? Which/what and have they played a thing together before? Good luck, and consider it practice!

The massive distrust of trees doesn't help, either. Coming from the high plains desert, however, Killweasel is great at getting on with snakes, scorpions, and other things that live under rocks, and "should we enter this dungeon?" should never be a problem...

[calissa]

Is this the part where I feign ignorance and point out it is autumn? But yes, please do let me know.

The group have never played a thing together before--this is a one-shot deal. Our usual meeting room is closed for renovations, so we're taking over a gaming store instead. Some of the people will have never played an RPG before. So no pressure!

Oh! Desert druid! That's a great angle.

[onewhitecrow]

[facepalm] Hopefully sooner than your next autumn, then.

One-shot of what? Less pressure than playing with veterans, for sure. How'd it go, or will that be a post?

Hopefully high steppe scrub desert origins should be a little less clichéd than the usual "what're these guys from Dune doing here" type. [holds up marmot familiar] Tell you what, though, this is making me miss having elven characters around until it all but physically hurts. [sigh] I need to get the next Sil post up, at least.

[calissa]

Easy to lose track of when you're in another hemisphere.

I should probably get around to posting at some stage. But the short of it was that there were a couple of games running. There was a board game (House on Haunted Hill, I think), a friend ran Fiasco, and my sweetheart ran Night Witches. I had a Dungeon World adventure ready, but no one was interested (which I thought was very out of character for a group of SFF writers).

I look forward to hearing how you go with the druid.