Evil was about to win and take over the land. But the leader of the Evil Army, the demonologist Black Herran, had a change of heart on the cusp of victory. This change of heart left her army without a leader and a power void in the world, that allowed her side of the conflict to ultimately not gain victory. Forty years later, “Evil” seems the only side that can save the world from the “Powers of Light” and their unstoppable take-over of the land. This is The Maleficent Seven from Cameron Johnston.
Black Herran was a dread demonologist, and the most ruthless general in all Essoran. She assembled the six most fearsome warriors to captain her armies: a necromancer, a vampire lord, a demigod, an orcish warleader, a pirate queen, and a twisted alchemist. Together they brought the whole continent to its knees… Until the day she abandoned her army, on the eve of total victory.
40 years later, she must bring her former captains back together for one final stand, in the small town of Tarnbrooke – the last bastion against a fanatical new enemy tearing through the land, intent on finishing the job Black Herran started years before.
Seven bloodthirsty monsters. One town. Their last hope.
Black Herran realized on that day when she was about to take over the land, she’d accomplished everything she sought. She also realized she was pregnant, so she wanted to “retire” and raise her family in peace. When the army led by “The Falcon Prince” is steamrolling the world and destroying all who don’t follow their goddess, gets closer to Tarnbrooke, Herran’s village, she knows she needs to “get the band back together” and starts to reach out to her old generals and powerful allies. This is a gutsy move considering how she disappeared on her allies and left them in disarray. Being the smart and powerful leader she is, Black Herran doesn’t exactly go into this empty handed. Her necromancer, Maeven, is desperate to save her sister; the monstrous vampire Lorimer wants his land protected from the hated Falcon Prince; Amogg Haddak; the orc chieftain is always itching for a fight and Black Herran convinces her that the Falcon Prince will eventually grow and get to the orc lands; the god-with-no-worshippers Tiarnach has nothing better to do; the pirate queen Verena Awildan is convinced to join; and the alchemist/wizard Jerak Hyden sees opportunities to experiment and become more powerful. Joining them is Penny, a villager who impresses Amogg.
These characters, maybe with the exception of Penny, would be the main antagonist in many fantasy novels, but here in The Maleficent Seven, they are part of the protagonist team. The vampire eats humans, the orc wants to smash everything, the alchemist/wizard wants to experiment on people. Somehow, Black Herran is able to get these villains united for what is really a good cause and it makes for a damned entertaining novel. Johnston humanizes these monsters, builds up empathy for them and gets you to root for them to win despite that they’d otherwise be the enemies of the heroes.
This book is enormously fun and over the top blasting & up-turning of and highlighting popular fantasy tropes. Getting the band back together is always a fun story mold and when done well in the hands of a writer like Cameron Johnston, the book can also be smart and break away from expectations. He populates his band of characters fairly evenly along gender lines, with a female as the leader. All the characters have more depth than they might were they to be the Dark Overlord of another hero’s novel. Even if they commit deeds that are evil and grotesque, it is in the service of a greater good and bringing down a greater evil, a hypocritical evil. One of my pet peeves is I really have little tolerance for people how are hypocritical, so that element of this novel worked extremely well for me.
As I was reading this novel and enjoying the hell out of it, I was reminded of two novels in particular, Ari Marmell’s criminally underrated The Goblin Corps and Nicholas Eames’s Kings of the Wyld. Aged, experienced warriors, a band of evil characters (you’d be forgiven for thinking along the lines of an RPG party of players) coming together to bring down a big bad. Johnston has some really nice flairs of originality and injects some welcome surprises along the way.
This book isn’t necessarily billed as the first of a series, but it can be read as such and Johnston most definitely ends The Maleficent Seven with the promise of more stories to be told by him and read by me. Obviously, I’d welcome those stories.
A fun romp of a novel.
Recommended.
© 2021 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | Angry Robot Books
August 2021 | 400 Pages
http://www.cameronjohnston.net/
