Where to start with this one? Paul Kreuger has unleashed a powerful, imaginative novel into the world and it borrows from pop culture, fantastical tradition and is cooked up in a stew of fun. There’s plenty of magic, wonderful characters, a world that is refreshing and new.
Four destinies collide in a unique fantasy world of war and wonders, where empire is won with enchanted steel and magical animal companions fight alongside their masters in battle.
A soldier with a curse
Tala lost her family to the empress’s army and has spent her life avenging them in battle. But the empress’s crimes don’t haunt her half as much as the crimes Tala has committed against the laws of magic . . . and against her own flesh and blood.
A prince with a debt
Jimuro has inherited the ashes of an empire. Now that the revolution has brought down his kingdom, he must depend on Tala to bring him home safe. But it was his army who murdered her family. Now Tala will be his redemption—or his downfall.
A detective with a grudge
Xiulan is an eccentric, pipe-smoking detective who can solve any mystery—but the biggest mystery of all is her true identity. She’s a princess in disguise, and she plans to secure her throne by presenting her father with the ultimate prize: the world’s most wanted prince.
A thief with a broken heart
Lee is a small-time criminal who lives by only one law: Leave them before they leave you. But when Princess Xiulan asks her to be her partner in crime—and offers her a magical animal companion as a reward—she can’t say no, and she soon finds she doesn’t want to leave the princess behind.
This band of rogues and royals should all be enemies, but they unite for a common purpose: to defeat an unstoppable killer who defies the laws of magic. In this battle, they will forge unexpected bonds of friendship and love that will change their lives—and begin to change the world.
The war is over, so the story can begin because the fallout of the war amounts to a reshuffling of the political powers. People are recovering, nations are broken, much has been lost. Tomoda is the overthrown nation, but one of the royal family still lives and is one of the four primary characters at the heart of this story – Prince Jumiro. He is sent back to his nation with Tala, a soldier of Sanbunan, the nation who overthrew Tomoda. The other two characters, who happened to be paired up are Xiulan and Lee, an investigator and a thief respectively. They have their own thoughts on Jumiro and what it means that the onetime most powerful nation Tomoda has been overthrown. Krueger tells the story through those four points of view, which gives the novel a really nice feel, allowing each character to truly feel like the protagonist of their own story. That’s the premise with which Steel Crow Saga begins.
Providing the mechanism for power, in a literal sense, are fascinating magic forms of magic. Shadepacting, which is practice by some people (the Sanbunans like Tala and Shangs like Xiulan) allows practitioners of merge with an animal, which they can make appear when called. Another group (The Tomodanes) employs metalpacting, which is fairly self-explanatory and has allowed them such feats as crafting cars without engines.
When groups of people are enemies, they naturally point fingers at each other and one particular point of contention between the Tomodanes and the Sanbunas is the shadepacting magic. The Tomodanes look down upon shadepacting as a form of slavery, and this proves to be great fuel for Tala and Jumiro as their journey progresses and they inevitably come to know each other more. They are essentially stuck together as traveling companions, Tala is escorting Jimuro in chains so he can ascend the throne as the last of his line and kickstart peace talks. Jimuro is also pursued by the duo of Xiulan and Lee, Xiulan hoping to avenge the tragedy that befell her people at the hands of Jimuro’s people in years before and during the devastating war.
The magic is just one great element that makes this novel shine. Much of the promo copy for this book compared the magic to Pokemon, and I suspect that’s where Kreuger was drawing influence. For me, the shadepacting felt more like a combination of the dæmons from Philip Pullman’s epic His Dark Materials saga the power of a Green Lantern ring, but that’s because I’m more familiar with those two than Pokemon. But the awesomeness of the magic is not just it exists, but that there are multiple strands of magic, and in that respect I was reminded a bit of the “Investiture” magic from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels. The world is a fascinating almost steampunk blend of technology and magic.
For me, the strongest element of the novel is the cast of the four protagonists. Each has a unique voice and view into the world in which they live, much of which is colored by the long war that has affected them. As I said, each character’s POV chapters could be extracted from the novel and packaged together and you’d have four solid and engaging stories – they are truly the heroes of their own stories in that regard. Kreuger does something great with these characters, they grow as they get to know each other, maybe not quite the “friends becoming enemies, enemies becoming friends” thing, but what begins as begrudging respect matures over the course of the novel and it is a gripping element of the novel to behold.
Steel Crow Saga is an epic novel of war, pain, magic, conflict, understanding, disagreement, and just plain fun. In the afterword, Paul Kreuger says this novel is so much of himself for the world to see. Well, Paul, I’ll take that as introduction and say that I’m damned glad to meet you!
Highly Recommended
© 2019 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Del Rey Books | September 2019 | 528 Pages
https://paul-krueger.com/
Excerpt: https://www.tor.com/2019/09/10/excerpts-steel-crow-saga-paul-krueger/
Review Copy courtesy of the Publisher
