World War II and magic, two ingredients of speculative fiction that work well separately, but when combined smartly as they are in David Mack’s The Midnight Front, taste great together. In Mack’s alternate history and epic fantasy mash-up, the setting is in the early days of World War II and a secret group of sorcerers on both sides of the war use demons to perform their magick as adepts and karcists (sorcerers).
From New York Times bestselling author David Mack comes a visionary World War II-era adventure. The Midnight Front is the epic first novel in the Dark Arts series.
On the eve of World War Two, Nazi sorcerers come gunning for Cade but kill his family instead. His one path of vengeance is to become an apprentice of The Midnight Front—the Allies’ top-secret magickal warfare program—and become a sorcerer himself.
Unsure who will kill him first—his allies, his enemies, or the demons he has to use to wield magick—Cade fights his way through occupied Europe and enemy lines. But he learns too late the true price of revenge will be more terrible than just the loss of his soul—and there’s no task harder than doing good with a power born of ultimate evil.
At the center of the story is Cade Martin, an orphan (of course) who sees his parents murdered by a Leviathan in front of him. Their death and killer are nearly on an equal level, in terms of shocking Cade. In addition to the Leviathan killing Cade’s parents, it knocks him out for several months. When he awakens, he finds himself in a strange place, surrounded by even stranger people led by the enigmatic Adair Macrae, the centuries-old Scottish leader of the Midnight Front. Cade realizes his course in life, to avenge his family’s death and destroy the Nazis who were behind his parent’s death. Although the Midnight Front is based in the United Kingdom, the members of the cadre are comprised of adepts from the Allied Nations: Stefan, Anja, and Niko. Much to the surprise of everybody except Adair, Cade progresses through his magickal training very quickly to become a karcist.
On the opposite side of the war, the karcists of the Nazis are led by Kein Engel, whose motivation is more than just backing the Nazis. There’s a long history between Engel and Macrae going back hundreds of years. Engel eventually emerges as more than just a distant dark lord as he and our heroes interact, either with words or their demonically powered magick. More so than Engel, his own protégé Briet Segfrunsdóttir becomes more and more interesting and full of depth as Mack pulls the reader forward with his magnetic narrative.
Mack is one of the more prolific, well-known, and respected tie-in writers, having produced several Star Trek novels that rank quite high. About the only other Star Trek novelist I can think of more associated with Star Trek is Peter David. The Midnight Front is the first of a series and I think Mack’s first published Epic Fantasy novel. It is a well-thought out novel. With his background writing stories based on a cinematic franchise, Mack’s skills at depicting a wide canvas that evokes strong images is no surprise. If creating a world / sandbox of his own in which to play was a challenge for Mack, it doesn’t show. Granted, World War II is a familiar canvas, but that’s just the foundation. The specifics of the Magick, demons, and the whole cosmology come through the page and story quite naturally. The plotting is rapid fire, too. Barely an intake of breath happens before the action kicks in, thrusting both Cade and the reader into a fantastical world of magick. Cade hesitated only a little when it came to believing in the magick, which was welcome. Most of the characters were well-drawn and believable, to boot.
It wasn’t too much of a surprise that Cade turned to be such an important, chosen character. Readers expect these things when opening up a book dealing with magic(k) and demons. What felt a little too tropey was the standard withholding of information, that is the mentor (Adair) refusing to reveal the full story to Cade, especially of what Cade was early in the novel. That’s a trope that really frustrates me, but everything else Mack did with his characters and world far, far outweighs what came to be a very minor annoyance.
On the opposite side of the coin, and to me what more than balances that trope, was the relationship between Cade and Anja. Both were headstrong and before Cade showed up, Anja was the most powerful and favored protégé of Adair. Her resentment at a perceived replacement felt genuine and the resolution, or at least progression, of her relationship with Cade felt just as genuine in its trope-resistance. I also found how Mack set up the logical conflict between Cade and Briet to be played out quite well proving that just because something is expected (like two protégés becoming rivals) doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do from a storytelling perspective or enjoyable.
Before reading the book, I couldn’t help mentally thinking of this as a potential “spiritual predecessor” to Myke Cole’s Shadow OPS/Reawakening novels; both Mack and Cole’s novels deal with magic/supernatural divisions of the military. That’s about where the comparisons largely end; Mack’s novels have a slightly more alternate-history bent and more of a stark good v. evil/Epic Fantasy bent. In the end, I do think readers who enjoy Cole’s novels will enjoy this one, as will readers looking for a strong injection of Fantasy into their Alternate History (or vice versa). The Midnight Front would also appeal to the same readers who enjoyed Ian Tregillis’s Milkweed Tryptich or Kay Kenyon’s new Alternate History series which began with At the Table of Wolves.
I enjoyed the hell out of this novel – empathetic characters, fantastic worldbuilding, and magnetic plotting. Mack doesn’t shy away from depicting the death, consequences, and sheer horror of war, either. Mack’s rich worldbuilding hints at a history far beyond what is presented in this book, allowing for potential stories of the past while the two subsequent novels in the series already indicate there is a welcome future to Cade’s world. I am really looking forward to The Iron Codex, book 2, when it publishes in about a year. I may have to hunt-down some of Mack’s Star Trek novels in the meantime.
Recommended
© 2018 Rob H. Bedford
Book One of The Dark Arts
http://davidmack.pro/writing/the-midnight-front/
Excerpt: https://www.torforgeblog.com/2017/11/09/excerpt-the-midnight-front-by-david-mack/
Published by Tor Books | January 2018
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
