Shadow of an Empire by Max Florschutz

Shadow of an Empire

by Max Florschutz

This isn't Mr. Florshutz’ first appearance in this review series, back in April of 2017, I reviewed his cyberpunk novel Colony (link at the bottom of this review). Mr. Florschutz was kind of enough to offer me a free copy of Colony, which I appreciated. Shadow of an Empire was not a free copy; Mr. Florshutz offered but I honestly wanted to support a talented writer. That said, what follows is my honest opinion of the work.

Shadow of an Empire is a Western (in the literary not geopolitical sense) style fantasy novel, set in a world recovering from a civilization-ending apocalypse. A world where people and animals have been strangely affected by this Armageddon but have managed to rebuild civilization and achieve a level of industrialization. Before I get into that though, let me talk about the western a bit. The Western is an incredibly American setting and style of writing, rooted in what is in many ways a unique historical experience. Despite that or perhaps because of it, it has drawn a lot of attention internationally, from the Spaghetti Westerns (western movies directed and produced by Italians, which also launched Clint Eastwood to megastardom) to Japanese anime. I think part of it is it's a style of writing and setting that seems to translate well to fanastic settings. You don't have to set your western in the United States of 1800. You can set it on a science fiction colony world in the far future, you can set it on some fantasy world with magic and elves, you can set it on an alternate earth or a post apocalyptic wasteland. The elements you need are easily recognizable and fairly distinct. You start with a stark, harsh but beautiful land with an unforgiving climate, then you add native cultures in conflict with more technologically advanced newcomers who represent the leading edge of an expanding empire or nation. Plant rugged self-sufficient characters, some of whom have a questionable relationship with the law but most of them with a firm sense of right and wrong (although you can successfully dispense with that in some cases) as the center of your narrative. These characters must struggle against their environment and fellow men. Ensure that the expanding nation's grip is loose and it's government distant. Apply a healthy topping of violent problem solving, traditionally with rifles and revolvers. With this you have the basics of a western story, but just like cake is more then a list of it's ingredients, a genre is more then it's setting elements and themes. Let's talk about this specific story and see what kind of cake Mr. Florshutz has to offer us.

Shadow of an Empire is set in the Outlands, a remote and arid wilderness that’s sparsely settled by tough independent folk who prefer to be left alone by a government that stays distant. It exists between two heavily settled coasts ruled by the Empire, an expanding industrial civilization knit together by steam engine trains that run through the Outlands. The Empire rules the Outlands with a light touch because there's not much out there justifying a heavy presence and the folks who live there are quiet. That light touch is personified in our main character Salitore Amazd, imperial adjudicator. Adjudicator's are lawmen with broad but limited powers who seem to serve the same function as US marshals. They track down criminals at the behest of the peacekeepers and local governments of the land and deliver them back dead or alive as needed. Salitore is a veteran of the job, being able to survive alone in the harsh conditions of the Outlands, track his targets and trade unkind words or if needed bullets with those same targets. It's a life that keeps him on the move and with few close friends but it's also a life that Salitore loves as he spends most of his time under a wide open sky doing work that matters. It's also a life that is under threat, because down-at-the-heels nobleman turned-petty-criminal named Nirren has decided to jump to the big leagues. Nirren makes his jump from petty criminal to most wanted man in the Empire by staging a jail break, breaking out thirty-seven of the most dangerous killers, rapists, and thieves in the Empire from a train meant to take them to the Empires hardest jail. If that wasn't enough, Nirren also sent a letter to all the major newspapers declaring he had done so to liberate the Outlands from the rule of the Empire, claiming that the prisoners were just the first in a wave of revolution. Worse than that however? Nirren also claims to the newspapers that Salitore Amazd is in on the scheme. So to protect the people and the land that he loves, Salitore has to figure out just what Nirren is up to, track him and his band of cold blooded killers down and figure out how he's gonna take them out when he does so. It might have been easier if he had just stayed out in the desert honestly.

Luckily Salitore isn't alone in this;  he has the help of Meelo Karn, imperial inquisitor. Inquisitors are not religious figures here but law enforcement officers who have the authority to go anywhere and use any resource while investigating or attempting to stop a crime. They're kinda like an turbo charged FBI. They mostly operate in urban environments but for a threat like this, well sometimes you gotta leave your comfort zone. Meelo Karn is a capable young lady who is a rising star in the Inquisition, being the youngest person ever promoted to her rank, she is, as you might guess, a driven professional who wants to make the world a little safer for other people. While she's not an expert in dealing with wilderness conditions, she can handle herself in a fight and is a skilled investigator. A lot of the book rests on the interaction between Meelo and Salitore; luckily the two characters play off each other rather well. In a kind of a break from modern convention, there's not a lot of quipping humor here but instead straightforward conversation and professionalism carry this relationship. Additionally what personality clashes there are get solved in a reasonable adult manner. This might not sound like a lot but after watching a number of writers drag out interpersonal drama for the sake of padding the story? I kinda enjoy it. It shows that you don't need artificially generated drama and angst to tell a good story. Mr. Florshutz manages to write Meelo and Salitore without making them into unconvincing idealists or turning them into jaded cynics. So instead we get a pair of people who know that there's a lot of bad in the world but there's plenty of good people and good things worth defending and taking satisfaction in their ability to do so.

Meelo's also got her own nemesis in Lady Varay, a crazed serial killer who targets men and carries a grudge against Meelo for catching her and getting her locked away in the first place. Giving Meelo a personal enemy in the group was a good call because it adds a personal element to the struggle. The story is told entirely from Salitore and Meelo's point of view and we never really get a first hand look at the insider of the villain's head. This helps preserves the mystery of what Nirran's plans are and what he's doing but it runs the risk of making the conflict between him and our heroes abstract at times, as they're mostly opposing each other on the grounds of one of them being a pair of law enforcers and another being a career criminal. This could have been a weakness of the book but instead it gives the plot an air of mystery as Salitore and Meelo struggle not just to chase down Nirran and his crew, but to figure out just what it is they think they're doing and how they're going to stop them while outnumbered about twenty to one. Mr. Florshutz also uses a good amount of action and suspense to avoid that, giving both our main characters secrets that they are holding but that he hints to throughout the book using the reveal of each secret to best effect.

The world itself is an interesting one as well. This is a world climbing back from the depths of a dark age so complete that few people remember the past at all. It's a world where people display strange abilities and powers, like being to absorb light and generate it, or sound, or heat, or kinetic energy. Nor are humans the only ones who are developing powers beyond the norm. Creatures like the Chort use their ability to absorb light and sound to aide in their hunting of the native cattle of the Outland, huge creatures that can have up to three pairs of horns and grow larger than a wagon. Mr. Florshutz also does well in showing how such powers would intertwine with technology by giving us steam trains that can run longer and further then they ever could due to men and women called boilers for their ability to absorb and redirect heat. This is taken to extreme degrees with the creation of the gray knights, steam powered one-man mechanical suits that are only made possible by the pilot being a boiler.

There are events outside the immediate story that are commented on and allowed to run alongside the main plot until they pay off. For example we have a running political thread of noble houses feuding with each other in the story taking up space in the newspapers, and the growing rift in the Wander tribes. Natives to the Outlands, some of them are willing to coexist peacefully with settlers like Salitore but others are choosing more violent reactions to the encroachment on their traditional lands. Mr. Florschutz avoids infodumping, instead just seeding information into the story, letting it come up naturally through the plot and having each revelation feed into the next. By building up on each revelation, the reader is able to get a good feel for what is and what is not possible in the world and isn't bogged down by paragraphs explaining details that we don't honestly need to know. The result is a setting that draws you into the story and becomes a character in it's own right.

In Shadow of an Empire, Mr. Florschutz creates a tightly woven story with gun battles, fist fights, and death-defying rides; all in the service of solving a mystery while on horseback. He does this against a background of a harsh but beautiful environment under a hot sun. Despite the temperature change I can't help but feel that much of this is pulled from his earlier life in Alaska, which remains the last bastion of the American Frontier (speaking as an Alaskan… yes.  Yes it is.). There were a couple plot reveals that didn't quite work for me but they didn't bog down the story too much, and I won’t say which ones because I don’t want to spoil the story. For the most part the secrets that are revealed are decently foreshadowed so they don't feel like solutions pulled out of nowhere but aren't so heavily foreshadowed that you find yourself wanting him to just get on with it. It's a very different book from Colony and shows that Mr. Florschutz is capable of a good amount of flexibility in his writing and I look forward to seeing what else he can bring to the table in the future. I will note that Shadow of an Empire is a good bit shorter than Colony and they are both only available on Kindle at the moment. Hopefully we can see him arrive in print someday. Shadow of an Empire by Mr. Florschutz gets an A-.

Next week, upon your request readers, the book that led to many a childhood trauma. Watership Down. Keep Reading!

If you would like to see my review of Colony by Max Florshutz click the link below!

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2017/04/colony-by-max-florschutz.html