Breach of Faith book II By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens

 Breach of Faith book II

By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens

Breach of Faith is the sequel to Breach of Peace that we reviewed last month. So the only thing I'm going to repeat here is the Dread Disclaimer. As I've mentioned before, both your editor and I have known Mr. Stevens for years, although I've never met him face to face. I've been giving him praise and grief over his work for years. In fact, Mr. Stevens was kind enough to send me these books and was the one to tell me about Mr. Gibbs' work. I'm honestly pleased to see him publishing works but I hope to see him writing in his own worlds soon, as his imagination deserves its own space in the written world (Seriously.  His imagination is endless, and I have never seen anyone else with his creative drive.). Come on Stevens. You know you can. That said, everything you are about to read is my honest opinion but I feel I would be doing my readers a disservice if I wasn't upfront. If you'd like to know more about Mr. Stevens, I encourage you to read my Breach of Peace review and perhaps even read the book. That said, let's catch everyone up on the setting and the plot right? Warning there will be spoilers for the first book here.

The Breach series as I'm going to call it takes place within the wider universe of the Fight the Good Fight universe by Daniel Gibbs (I've reviewed the first book of that series). The series takes place far in the future, Earth has been unified under a single government but unfortunately, it's a tyrannical single-party state, called the League of Sol, preaching an extremist (by the standards of such things as Juche {League of Sol, when the North Koreans ask if maybe you should calm down...}) brand of socialism alongside a deep hatred of individuals and anything that smacks of individualism. Demanding that instead, people abandon any other identity than servants of Society, the idea of an overarching whole that united everyone into a single machine-like society. Strangely this idea was not universally popular and entire populations fled Earth into the stars thanks to the work of a genius, who also didn't want to live under a single-party state that was determined to dictate their every move. The dissenters fled far from Earth and settled the worlds of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy. The largest group formed the Coalition of Terra, mostly made up of people who were religious and believed in individual rights, democracy, capitalism, and apple pie. This group from what I can tell was dominated by Americans, Israelis, Commonwealth nations, and several Arabic states. Strangely, the Coalition idea of governmental and economic organization was less than universally popular (Plus, not everyone likes apple pie.  I am more of a strawberry rhubarb man myself.{You… Wait is that a real pie?  Man, I want to try that now.[It is so good]}) and some populations split off to settle their own worlds, with blackjack and hookers! (And less authoritarian forms of socialism.) These worlds would have a... Complicated history with the Coalition, as most of them, were single star system states against the multi-system state of the Coalition but if nothing else the Coalition prevented alien empires from preying on them. However, most issues had settled down and it appeared the human nations of the Sagittarius arm might know an age of peace and plenty. But everything changed when the League of Sol attacked! (You just had to go full Fire Nation didn’t you?  Didn’t you!? {If you look into my eyes you’ll see a reviewer with no regret! [You shall have cause to regret!]})

The League of Sol fell on the Coalition of Terra like a mountain but the Coalition was able to fight off the assault and force the League into a nightmare position. That of fighting a long war against a large, industrialized enemy, while you're at the very end of your supply chain and have enemies closer to home (My God.  They did a USSR Turnabout! {bound to happen eventually}). The League wasn't completely brain dead, however, deciding not to open hostilities to the non-Coalition worlds, who would now be referred to as the neutral worlds. Instead deciding to play on the resentments and preexisting rivalries to try and diplomatically and economically isolate the Coalition. Enter Captain James Henry, disgraced former naval officer of the Coalition turned independent spacer. Captain and owner of the Shadow Wolf, a cargo ship with a souped-up engine and a diverse and skilled crew of professionals ranging from the former socialist revolutionary from a megacorp dominated planet, Tia, the escaped League of Sol doctor Oskar, the frankly insanely libertarian Felix, and the alien Yanik and more. In fact, to be honest, the crew is big enough that at times I lose track of some of them. So one practical suggestion I would have for Mr. Stevens and other authors writing ensemble novels like this would be to include a dramatis personae list in the back of your book (Can concur!). Trust me, it'll make things easier for everyone folks. Now that said, the crew that does manage to get a good amount of screen time is colorful enough to stand out and stand on their own. Hopefully, in future books, the rest of the crew will get space to shine.

Breach of Faith takes up right up where Breach of Peace leaves off (In fact, full disclosure, they were intended to be one book, but the editor and Gibbs forced the split.). Merchant ships had been disappearing at a higher rate than normal in neutral space and Captain Henry was hired by three competing interests on the planet Lusitania, one of the strongest and wealthiest of the neutral planets, to find and bring back a survivor of one of those disappearances, Ms. Karla Lupa. This was complicated in that each of the three were pretty opposed to the other, one for example being the leader of the planetary fascist party and the other being the minister of trade for the unity government looking to tame the fascist (You can’t work with the fash, and you cannot tame them.  The only solution to fascism is the death of the fascists.) and the third being the local Coalition spymaster. Because Karla Lupa is telling everyone it was the League who hijacked her trading ship and everyone wants to hear this story first hand. A further complication is brought about when Karla Lupa turns out to be Miri Gaon, a legendary Coalition spy whose infiltration of the League caused one of their greatest defeats in the war. Which explains why, when she realized that the League had seized the trading ship she was working on, she stole a spacesuit, a radio beacon, and a bunch of oxygen tanks and jumped ship (I certainly would have done the same thing.  Just nope right out of there!  Take my chances in the void!). Because if the League catches her, they're throwing her out of an airlock without a spacesuit. To top it off, because Mr. Stevens can't cut his characters a break (He really can’t), there's another problem when the Shadow Wolf limps into a landing on Lusitania. Someone blew up the planetary parliament! Killing most of the ministers and assembly members and now the planet is in chaos as everyone tries to figure out who set off the bombs and why. Captain Henry faces the fact that he might have escaped the deep space forces of the League to have thrustered right into a trap. He'll have to navigate a situation that is increasingly escalating into a possible civil war and that's without even considering what the League is doing. I do want to take a moment to mention that I really enjoy the work Mr. Stevens put into Lusitania here. He provides us with a complex political and social situation in a multicultural state that is fracturing under the weight of the contradictions of its laws and the needs of its citizens.  Mr. Stevens also takes care to provide us some native Lusitanian citizens in both books to give us an inside view of the situation, even as he blows up the situation he's set up and pushes everything to the breaking point. Of course, this is only a small part of the dangers facing Captain Henry; because even if he escapes Lusitania the League is still mustering forces, including its fleet of stolen ships for some hidden purpose and the League knows Captain Henry's role in things so far. A role that makes the forces of the League decidedly unhappy with him.

Captain Henry will have to build his own coalition of unlikely allies to figure out whatever the League's plan is, counter it and get enough evidence to expose it to the galaxy. Which will mean cutting deals with pirates, knife happy psychopaths with a grudge, and worse making dubious bacon-centered deals with alien nomads. Mr. Stevens doesn't pull any punches here; imagine having to sit down to dinner and be civil with a man who was trying to kidnap you a few days ago and might have killed someone who helped you just to give one example. Another piece of stress that Captain Henry has to manage is the fact that the intelligence services of the Coalition are involved in this and might be trying to recruit him to serve a nation he's pretty sure he wants nothing to do with anymore. He'll have to thread all these conflicting loyalties and desires however if he's going to survive and protect his crew and you know, prevent the League from conquering human space and snuffing out the idea of religious, economic, or individual freedom. Mr. Stevens gives us a story that takes intrigue, political wheeling, and dealing, and blends it with gunfights and fleet battles. Along with some simmering popular uprisings for flavor of course (The best kind.). It was a fun and easy read and I was honestly caught off guard by a couple of the plot twists but I was never left feeling that the plot twist was unbelievable. Mr. Stevens also frankly does a better job with the villains in this universe, although there are times when I feel his work is something along the manner of frantically gluing layers to a cardboard cut out to create some depth to the League of Sol. The League Admiral Hartford for example comes across as a patriot and a professional member of a military fleet and above all else a human being. He treats his crew reasonably, he learns from mistakes, and carries grudges. On the flip side, we also get Commander Li of the security forces, who is an out and out fanatic who screamingly compares individualism to being a murderer. This does add a bit of depth to the League but they still come off as a bit flat to me but I can't blame Mr. Stevens for that. Of course, not everyone arrayed against the League is a shiny paladin of justice, as we have pirates who Mr. Stevens makes clear are very dangerous and brutal people, and Mr. Kepper, the professional psychopath out to teach people why you don't make the work personal. Mr. Stevens' willingness not to pull any punches and blend of good character work and exceptional world-building along with a plot with enough turns for high-speed car chase creates a fun book that you'll enjoy if you like space opera with a bit of gray. That said, the book is at times overcrowded with characters and the pace gets a bit too frantic as Mr. Stevens tries to tie everything up. Breach of Faith by Daniel Gibs and Gary Stevens gets an A-, try reading Breach of Peach and Breach of Faith back to back so you get the full story all at once.

I hope you enjoyed this week's review, if you did consider joining our ever-wise patrons at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where for as little as a dollar a month you get votes on upcoming reviews, themes and more!  Hope to see you there.  So next week, we kick off a little event we're calling Fangsgiving!  For the whole month of October, we'll be focusing on a singular character that has dictated in a lot of ways how we see a classic monster of the night!  We'll be paying tribute to the original count of the night, Count Dracula.  First we'll be looking at the historical figure that inspired Dracula, Vlad Tepes in Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally.  Then we'll be looking at the official prequel to the novel Dracula, written by Brom Stokers' great nephew and JD Barker.  From there we move on to the novel itself and then the long lost Icelandic adaptation that turned into its own novel.  We hope y'all enjoy the upcoming reviews.  Until then though, stay safe and Keep Reading. 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Normal text is your reviewer Garvin Anders 

Dwarves Vol. II: Ordo of Retaliation By Nicolas Jarry

Dwarves Vol. II: Ordo of Retaliation

By Nicolas Jarry

“The power of a dwarf is measured by the number of secrets he keeps”

Urus, House Ettorn

So it's been 2 years since I reviewed a book from this series. Which is a lot longer than I meant to let it lie, so let's take it from the top. Dwarves is a French fantasy comic series by comic book writer and novelist Nicolas Jarry. He was born on the 19th of June in 1976, in Rosny-sous-Bois, which is a commune (which functions sorta like a township) in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. He studied biology at Bordeaux, became a supervisor at a school, and then worked as a sales specialist in the comics department at the Marbot bookstore (That’s an interesting pivot). None of his novels have been translated into English as far as I can find, but they are listed as the two-volume Chronicles of a Warrior Sînamm, and the Wolf of Deb trilogy. It's after meeting comic book writer Jean Luc Istin that he turned to writing comics. Dwarves is published by Delcourt, the 3rd largest publisher of Franco-Belgian comics, founded in 1986 by the merger of two magazines Charlie Mensuel and Pilote. Dwarves is part of a shared world with at least three other series, Elves, Orcs, and Goblins and Mages all set in the same world. Each graphic novel follows a different character who occupies a different part of their race's society and faces different challenges. So each graphic novel is more or less stand-alone, although some are more interrelated than others, for example, my second review in this series jumped to Vol VI since it covered the life of the son of the main character of Vol I.

Dwarves, as you might have guessed dear readers, is devoted to exploring the society and viewpoint of the Dwarfish race so let me give you some background. Unlike the Anglo tradition of placing Dwarves below ground, these Dwarves live above ground divided into fortress-states ruled mostly by Kings. The Fortress-states are united by orders that function as guilds or castes maintaining the interests and knowledge of their craft across borders. The orders not only function as guilds but as political power blocks seeking to control the Kings and governments of the Dwarves behind the scenes. There is a caste-like function to the orders in that it seems most members are born into them and membership in an order dictates your role and prestige in society however as we saw in Volume I, which I reviewed wayyyy back in 2017 there is some social mobility. Volume II focuses on the Order of Retaliation which functions as the merchants and bankers but also controls all the vice industries: prostitution, drugs, etc. They use this as a way of keeping the Kings and Nobility off their backs through a combination of bribery and blackmail; so not only are they constantly tempting the wealthy and powerful into corruption, they also blackmail you when you fall. It's as if the Chamber of Commerce was also run by the Mob (The Chamber of Commerce is just as corrupt. {Don't think the Chamber of Commerce is running its own secret society of assassins just to start with, so I'm gonna disagree}). More importantly for our story, there's a third-string to the Order's bow, that being the Black Lodge, a secret society of Dwarves raised from the age of six to be assassins, thieves, and spies. Including our main character Ordo.

Ordo is one of those guys who if he didn't have bad luck, would have no luck. He was born the sixth son on the sixth day on the sixth moon to a powerful family in the Order of Retaliation. On his sixth birthday, he was handed over to a master of the black lodge, who took a six-year-old boy to the worse hell hole neighborhood of the city and left him there alone overnight. As Ordo explains to us, this is done to every child taken by the Black Lodge. Only the ones who survive even get to start the training. The training has a lot in common with the worse ways to train child soldiers or induct men into terrorist organizations. By turning them against each other and forcing them to break social and moral taboos simply to survive, most will give up their own social bonds and identities believing themselves too morally soiled to go back home. Also by turning them against each other, you prevent them from working together against you or finding better ways around your training (If you ever want to see a good visual on how this works, do yourself a favor[?] and go watch Blood Diamond. Not a bad film, if a bit White Saviory, but it shows how the RUF in Sierra Leone indoctrinated its child soldiers. Also, you will never want to buy a diamond again. Which is a thing you should never want to do.). This tends to produce broken people capable of awful things simply because they can't believe themselves capable of anything better and it's a pretty vile thing to do. Ordo hasn't broken completely though, he still holds on to a piece of himself by holding on to his love of his sister. Even though he avoids interacting with her out of fear of what would mean for her. After years of working for the Black Lodge, Ordo is ready to do the one thing he's been thinking of doing since that forsaken night of his sixth birthday. Get his revenge on the Black Lodge and the Order of Retaliation. He's got the plan, he's got the intel he needs, he's got the talent but he needs a team. So Ordo recruits Heba, a fellow member of the Lodge who has been marked for death and another survivor of their training class, and Panham, a half-dwarf dragon rider. His plan is to break into the Black Lodge's greatest fortress of Fort Drae and steal or destroy their greatest treasures, crippling their ability to operate (You go Ordo! Seize the means!). However, his old master Abekash is on his trail and is looking to correct his mistakes with Ordo, by killing him because that's how a master assassin corrects mistakes.

While the last two volumes that we reviewed of the Dwarves series were about family, this is more about the individual. Ordo's struggle isn't to escape a father's shadow or find his way in the world. Ordo's struggle is to find a way to strike back at the people who tried to claim ownership of his very soul and avenge the massive wrongs they've done to him and others. To do that he'll use every skill and trick they taught him but he'll have to learn new skills and tricks to make it work and whether he can or not is a question in and of itself. Despite the level of intrigue he's operating at, Ordo is a fairly straight forward character to grasp and you find yourself horrified and sympathetic in turns. Horrified at what's been done to him and what he does to others to affect his revenge but sympathetic to his efforts to try and hold on to the barest scrap of himself and not be subsumed by this monstrous thing he's been sold to by his own family. This makes him interesting if nothing else, his struggle to hold on to that piece of his soul, to avoid completely surrendering to darkness, keeps him from becoming a boring stereotype. Which is good because he does balance on that knife's edge at times. Also, I have to admit the story simply isn't as compelling or powerful as Volume I and lacks the same punch. Additionally, the supporting characters are rather one-note although that may be for a lack of time. I would have liked to know more about Heba for example but I suppose there just wasn't space for it. Dwarves Volume II by Nicolas Jarry gets a B from me. Still worth a read if not as great as Volumes I and VI.

So as you may have noticed dear readers, our editor has rejoined us! Hope the capture teams were gentle to you Doc! (They were not!) So Dwarves II was voted for by our ever-wise patrons, if you to would like a vote on future reviews, themes and other ideas, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads a vote is just a dollar a month and lets us focus more on reviews. Next week, we bring September to a close-by looking at Breach of Faith by Gary T Stevens and Daniel Gibbs, the sequel to Breach of Peace from last month. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading.

Red text is your editor Dr. Allen 
Normal text is your editor Garvin 

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic By Tom Holland

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

By Tom Holland

This is Mr. Holland's 4th book in this review series, in our first year I reviewed Persian Fire and more recently I reviewed In the Shadow of the Sword and Millennium. While I would ask that no one look at my first-year reviews, I do urge everyone to read the books I've mentioned here. Since it's been so long, let's go back over who Mr. Holland is. Tom Holland was born January 5th, 1968 in Oxfordshire and brought up in the village of Broad Chalke, England. He attended Queen's College, Cambridge, and graduated with a double first. He headed over to Oxford and began work on a Ph.D. crafting a dissertation on Lord Byron but fed up with being a starving student turned to writing for a living. His first books actually used his research on Lord Byron (I could see Lord Byron himself as a vampire to be honest, especially with the modern interpretation of vampires being highly id-driven) to craft a pair of Gothic Horror novels about vampires. In fact, using his historic knowledge to create supernatural horror books swiftly became a calling card of his, and doing research for his last fiction book The Bone Hunter, led to reigniting his passion for antiquity and he resolved to turn to nonfiction. This led to him being involved in documentaries like Dinosaurs, Myths, and Monsters, ISIS the Origins and Violence and Islam: The Untold Story, which was based on one of his nonfiction works. He currently lives in London with his wife and two daughters. Rubicon, the topic of today's review, was actually his first nonfiction book published in 2003 by Random House.

There is no ancient civilization that holds the imagination and focus of the western world like the Roman Empire. Perhaps because it's one of the common roots of western civilization, maybe it's the sheer amount of history from its thousand-year existence, or the vibrant color and savagery of that history juxtaposed on an obsession with law and order, or that fact that until recently it was the closest that Europe had to a united government in history. Rubicon focuses on the period where Rome transitioned from a city-state republic with a large subservient empire to an empire ruled from the city of Rome by an Emperor. To explain what I mean by that, I'm going to steal a metaphor used recently by a friend of mine. Imagine that the United States was ruled by the city council of Washington D.C with the Mayor serving as the executive (oh man and you thought the late ’80s were insane in our reality imagine how this would have gone down). On top of that, only people who are awarded residency of the city by that council and their descendants, who are physically present in the city on the day of elections are allowed to vote. You can imagine the challenge of administering a continent with a city government but that's exactly what the Romans were attempting and as Mr. Holland shows us the Republic simply wasn't to stand up the stress. Of course, that's not the only issue bringing the firestorm about to engulf the entire Mediterranean world. There was also the issue of the character of the Romans, especially their upper class, and how that very character that had gained them control of the world as they knew it also caused them to turn on each other and almost burn it all down around their ears. If there wasn't enough wood on this fire, there were also the resentments and simmering social issues of the city and Italy. Because the lower classes had a thing or two to say about this as well and so did the men and women of the other cities of Italy, many of whom had provided the soldiers, ships, and money to gain those impressive conquests and damn it all they wanted their fair cut of the spoils! But! There is still more fuel for the flames here! Because on top of that was a West-East conflict, which fueled Roman anxieties, paranoia, greed, and above all else ambition. Because if there was one thing that served as a spark and oil to this towering metaphorical tower of wood (I get what you mean but I feel like this metaphor got a bit bigger than originally intended and became difficult to manage...oooooh kinda like the Roman Empire at this time in history), it was ambition because for the first time in history all the power and wealth of the nations of the Mediterranean was made the stakes of a single game. A game that would bring the kind of fame that rings down through the millennia to even the losers of the conflict and to the winners? Even greater fame and power over millions of lives and wealth to match.

Mr. Holland sets the stage in the opening of the book, explaining the belief that the Romans had in the prophecy of the Sybil, which was a kind of oracle. The Romans had a story that a woman appeared to the last king of Rome, offering to sell him 9 books for an incredibly high price. He refused laughingly. Her response was to burn 3 of them and offer to sell him 6 books for the same price, disturbed he refused again, only to see her burn another 3. Feeling panic that he had already made a terrible mistake he offered her anything she wanted for the last 3 books. They were books of prophecy of terrible dangers to the city of Rome and how doom could be averted. Because unlike the Greeks, the Romans believe the point of prophecy was to avert the future, otherwise what was the point of a prophecy in the first place? (The Sarah Conner approach personally I find it a bit more useful than going mad from accidentally murdering one of my parents) The prophecies themselves were treated as state secrets, the books hidden away in the main temple of Jupiter, and only accessible to a specific priest and his apprentice. They were only to be opened and read in the gravest of times. The prophecies were not to be copied or uttered out loud, only the remedies that the book suggested were written down and carried out post-haste. This didn't stop things from getting out although and there was more than one oracle in the ancient world. So as Rome grew in power and reach, as army after army was shattered by the legions and great powers fell one after another whispers spread. That the doom of Rome wouldn't be found on foreign lands and the greatest danger to Rome wasn't from without but from within. That Rome's own sons would be the ones to set the Republic ablaze and tear everything down. (Isn’t that how it always feels though? Things seem to rot from inside {I think Carthage, the Rus, the British Saxons to name a few would disagree, there are plenty of states and cultures destroyed by outside forces})

Mr. Holland starts of course with the system under strain and everyone knowing it but resisting reforms as too radical and unthinkable. Part of that was that the reforms would involve the wealthy and powerful giving things up, through actions like land reform and the poorest Romans gaining subsidized food and clothes. These reforms were championed by people in the noble classes but not by the majority of the noble class, the most notable reformers being the Gracchi brothers, who were basically murdered in the streets to prevent their programs from happening. From there Mr. Holland takes us to the conflict between successful generals Marius and Sulla. Italy had just exploded into rebellion, as the Italian states grew increasingly frustrated at carrying the burden of empire but not reaping the rewards. Sulla would show his abilities in putting this rebellion down but right as he finished a greater war with greater profits would ignite. At this point, Rome had an empire in the East, over the greek states in what is today Greece and parts of Turkey. However, there was foreign resistance led by Mithridates, who convinced Roman subjects to rebel and join him by murdering over 80,000 Roman citizens. Both Marius and Sulla, wildly successful military commanders fought to be elected to the post of consol and therefore leader of the army to put down Mithridates and more importantly, plunder the wealthy east. Sulla won but was stripped of his command after he left Rome. (wait did they really just decide to oust the person who had a huge army at his command and was about to head to war? {Even better, it was the army he had trained and lead in a prior war}) His reaction was to launch a military coup(like you do), which would lead to a military dictatorship and in generations ever after a whisper in the back of the head of every great Roman “If Sulla could do it... Why not you?” One of those Romans was a young man, who came within inches of being executed by Sulla but was spared by the intervention of his mother. Despite sparing him, Sulla predicted this young man was going to be nothing but trouble. Since the young man we're talking about is Julius Caesar, entire nations would end up agreeing with Sulla.

As you might have guessed, Julius Caesar does take center stage in the book but I do like how Mr. Holland is able to keep Caesar from monopolizing the book. Instead, he takes pains to show us the other people involved in this drama who would swing from allies, neutrals to enemies, and back throughout the climax of the multi-generational conflict of how the Roman Empire was going to be ruled and by who. It's here in the book that we go from a system under strain, to one that has simply snapped under pressure and everyone is brawling in the wreckage for the right to be the man who dictates the new reality. So Mr. Holland takes us through the lives of other major players in the conflict and even the supporting players. We are taken through the careers of men like Cato, Cicero, Senators of Rome who impossibly sought to maintain the old system and turn back the clock (why does this always feel like a bad idea?). Men like Crassus, Mark Antony, and Clodius who didn't care about the system or what replaced it so much as what power and profit they could wring from it (also a bad idea..). It's not just the Romans we look at, Mr. Holland takes time to look at others who played a role like Cleopatra, although he doesn't spend too much time on the foreign-born players in this drama. The man I learned most about was Pompey, who the Romans called Pompey the great. For most people, Pompey is kind of an also-ran when compared to Caesar but Mr. Holland gives Caesar's rival here the space to examine his life and show his accomplishments which are many and impressive. From recruiting his own army at the age of 25 and leading it on a string of victories from Spain to Syria until losing out finally to Caesar late in his life. Mr. Holland is also careful to provide context and the cultural information to show why these men and women made the decisions they did and how because of the times and places they were part of, certain decisions just weren't realistic or doable.

I don't have to tell you that we live in tense times, but I do think we should resist the urge to draw any parallels directly. For one thing, our system is a lot more robust and we're not fighting a civil war in our very living rooms. In fact, I would argue that the 1960s and 1850s were much tenser times for the US specifically. Now I know that's not at all comforting to the people suffering right here and now but I believe it will not be in vain and there will be a better tomorrow. So do not surrender to despair just yet readers. That said that doesn't mean we can't take lessons from this period of time and that it doesn't have relevance to us. What we can learn from this book is that traditions, customs, and even the systems of law and government that we use to maintain our lives are things that serve a purpose. They are a means, not an end (in other words don’t keep doing the same thing just because that's how it's always been done). As such they must change and be changed with the times and the demands of those times. There is no system that cannot be improved or reformed to work better and we resist any reform when we demand that the world stop changing... That's when we're most at risk of losing it all and having the kind of breakdowns that lead to men like Sulla and Caesar marching armies in the streets. This is a lesson our forefathers knew and one we need to relearn. If nothing else Rubicon serves as a valuable testament to the need for that lesson. Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland gets an A. Read it and remember to vote this year. (Hey guest editor Mr. Davis here: As someone who’s pay and livelihood depends largely on the whims of elected officials please don’t get stuck on just the national elections. Check your local candidates see what they stand for all the way down to the city council and/or school board, there are some challenges I am facing now that might have been a little easier if local officials had followed the recommended plans)

I like to thank our guest reviewer, Mr. Davis, for his hard work this week. Our regular editor Dr. Allen will be joining us next week according to the capture teams. The Rubicon was selected by our ever-wise patrons, who vote every month on what books get reviewed and at higher levels get to select what books I buy for future reviews. The lowest level which grants you a vote on book reviews, theme months and more is only a 1$ a month at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Hope to see you there! Next week, we return to the world of French comic books with Dwarves Vol II by Nicolas Jarry. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading!

Green text is your editor Mr. Davis
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Priest By Matthew Colville

Priest

By Matthew Colville

From what I can infer from his public comments, Matthew Colville was born and raised in the American Midwest with his grandfather having been a farmer in the region. In 1991 he graduated from Cypress College with an Associate in Arts for Computer Science. Starting around the year 2000, he would start work as a designer and writer for tabletop and video games. Most notably working on Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, the original Dune Collectible Card Game and RPG, a Star Trek RPG, and finally the video game Evolve which released in 2015. Today Mr. Colville is also known for his very successful youtube channel (which I have to admit I enjoy his videos), writing the comic book Critical Role Vox Machina: Origins with Matthew Mercer. Additionally, he kickstarted a pair of books for use with Dungeons and Dragons, Strongholds & Followers, which I own, and Kingdoms & Warfare, which hasn't hit the shelves yet. On top of all this, he published a fantasy novel Priest in 2010.

Priest is about a man named Heden, who is a man balanced between being a burnt-out hermit and a meaningful member of his community if he can decide who his community is of course. Heden has a lot of reasons for being on the edge of burn out. He's a former adventurer or “Campaigners” as they're called in this setting, who is suffering PTSD in a world without any real grasp on psychology. His former party members hate him, while at the same time clearly feel a deep sense of obligation to him. His social circle is made up of perhaps 3 people, with everyone else of consequence in the city he lives in regarding him as an object of fear, mockery, or confusion. All of this would be bad enough for anyone but Heden is also continuously thrown into jobs with brutal emotional and psychological tolls and even at the beginning of the book it's clear that it's wearing away at him. Part of the problem is there is simply no one else to send on many of these jobs as Heden has a combination of skills and abilities that are incredibly rare in his world, and the sheer bloody-mindedness to carry through these terrible works no matter what it costs him. He also cannot turn away from these jobs because he knows that anyone else will likely do a worse job than he will and still suffer the same burdens to their soul. Unfortunately for Heden, there's enough of a human being who cares for the people around him that he can't pass that metaphorical cup to someone else. To steal a phrase from a better writer, Heden believes it has to be him, someone else might get it wrong. Because of this, the bishop of his church is going to send him on a job that could possibly destroy him and have dire consequences for thousands of people if he fails. It'll also likely have dire consequences for him even if he succeeds.

Far north of Heden's city there's a haunted forest, full of creatures from a time before humanity. This forest is bordered by a small city called Ollghum Keep, whose inhabitants have followed a simple rule for keeping the peace between themselves and the forest. They stay the hell out of it. They also defer to the Knights of the Green, an order of divinely bound and blessed Knights who patrol the woods and maintain peaceful relations. They do this by keeping humans out and the various native creatures in. This is important as one group of these creatures, the Urq, creatures created by dragons to fight and kill humans have unified, and they're marching on Ollghum Keep. If they get there, they'll destroy it utterly and kill everyone, men, women, and children. The Knights of the Green, despite their small numbers, can stop it from happening. However, something has gone wrong, the commander of the order is dead and the order is paralyzed and torn apart with despair and internal conflict. Heden has been given a ritual prayer that will cleanse the order and allow them to select a new commander and march forward. For the ritual to work, he has to know what happened and forgive the Knights, and through his forgiveness comes the forgiveness of the divine. The problem here is that none of the knights will tell him what transpired and all of them are sunk into their own problems and ensnared in their own private vortices of guilt, despair, anger, and pride over what happened. The idea of admitting what took place and accepting the judgment of an outsider is simply too much to bear. It doesn't help that their pride and attitude towards Heden inflame his own class prejudices towards knights, but if he doesn't untangle this snare of resentments, secrets, unspoken regrets, loudly spoken oaths, and simmering anger then a lot of people are going to pay the price and it could mean the end of the Order of the Green and possibly the peace between the people of the woods and civilization.

The main danger to Heden in this novel is emotional and mental, as an experienced adventurer, he is carting around enough firepower to see off large numbers of enemies. This doesn't mean that Heden is never in physical danger, there are points in the book where he is confronting enemies who could kill him and come close to doing so. The conflict arises from the choice of what price is Heden going to pay to get this job done, or what price will he pay if he fails? There's also the bigger issue of the people of Ollghum Keep and the fact that their survival is literally riding on his shoulders and at times it seems like he's the only one who cares. Mr. Colville does a good job of showing us rather than telling us much of what's driving Heden. For example, while traveling north, Heden stops at a small village, where a carter and his family are attacked by monsters while he's there. A group of strapping village youths gather together and rescue the carter, but realize that the monsters have carried off his wife and son to the abandoned mine outside of town. If you have ever played a fantasy RPG, whether tabletop or video game you know where this is going. Heden, however, steps in and with a passing woodswoman takes the job, for a group of people he doesn't know and will never see again, all with no payment. Just to ensure a group of teenagers can stay starry-eyed youths for one more day instead of becoming hard-bitten adventurers, or worse, dying in the mud, surrounded by strangers. Despite this, he is still a deeply imperfect person, which we see when he temporarily turns a guardsman into stone because the guardsman wouldn't heed his warnings to back off and kept harassing him. Further complicating his character, there is the matter of the saint he gives his devotion to, which tells us more about him than a thousand monologues would. Mr. Colville uses these scenes and details to paint a portrait of a conflicted and troubled man who in many ways wants to withdraw from his fellow human beings but just can't bring himself to do so.

Mr. Colville is at his strongest when he can show instead of tell. For example, there is clearly a well built, detailed world here but we are told little about it. Instead, we have to piece together things from what we are shown and what comes up naturally in character conversation as Mr. Colville avoids info-dumping or overly expositional dialogue. While on the one hand, this can be intriguing and ensures the plot keeps moving without getting bogged down in details, it does leave some gaps in our understanding of just what is going on and how things work. For some readers this is great news, for others, it can be a distraction, as you have to fill in the gaps yourself. This style actually works pretty well as this is for all intents and purposes a mystery. Like Heden we have to parse things and try to work out just what happened in the woods that day when the commander of a small order of holy knights was killed and do so with limited information. Hell, we're left to puzzle out the structure of the world's religion and myth from incidental comments and events in the book. This can be frustrating for some readers but this story isn't about semi-mythical conflicts that happened thousands of years ago, though the wreckage and leftovers of those conflicts keep showing up. For myself, I honestly enjoy piecing things together from dialogue and character actions to see if I can reach my own understanding of the world, but not everyone is me. Along with that is the mystery of Heden's own history, why does his old party hate him but will fulfill any requests he makes of them? Why is he lurking in an expensive inn that he refuses to open to the public? Enough of his party survived and are all prosperous which means they were all able to cash out of the adventurer life with wealth and even some fame. Although given the reactions of some people to the name of their adventuring company, there's a fair amount of infamy there as well. It's what is left unspoken that seems to drive the relationships between all these characters, ultimately. Mr. Colville only gives us bare hints and clues to this. That said I can understand why Heden avoids thinking about those events or dwelling on his isolation from the people who would understand him best. (Guest Editor here to chime in for a moment. I personally adore stories with mystery to them, particularly ones that stay consistent within the world presented and don’t feel the need to explain each detail. While that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I have felt a distinct lack of them recently and so welcome them when I can find them.) Some thoughts are too sharp to play with casually and too heavy to lift alone, especially for someone in Heden's state. If you don't understand what I mean dear reader, then I hope you never do.

In my view, this is a book about failure. From Heden's recurring failure to make any kind of peace with his past or with his fellow human beings, to the knight's failure to accept that they need to come clean and accept judgment before they can move forward, and even the failure of the people of Ollghum Keep to realize just how much danger they are in. Whether or not any of the characters will find the strength to overcome these failures and achieve a better state is something I won't spoil for you. Now this book isn't entirely perfect, as there were a few characters I was left wondering were even necessary. For example, the Squire Aderyn, who frankly disappears from the book halfway through it. I feel having Heden told by outside agencies that Aderyn was now gone from the tale was a very weak part of the book. I also didn't care for some choices like the Knight's Cant, where they speak a sort of Shakespearean English but not very well. Stuff like that took me out of the story and I found it irritating, though it does help that Mr. Colville does have the Knight's drop the Cant eventually and speak simply.

Now I will laud Mr. Colville for sticking to his guns on this story. He lays out the problem and the solution and he doesn't let his characters weasel out of it or come up with some last-minute alternate solution that lets them sidestep their failures. The only way out for his characters is to squarely confront their biggest flaws and failures and accept them. Mr. Colville also doesn't shy away from embracing the implications of that and following through when necessary, and I admire the willingness to do so. I ended up reading this book in two sittings because I had a huge problem putting it down, finding myself really drawn into it despite the problems I've listed. While the book might not be to everyone's taste if you're not put off by what I've mentioned then this is a book well worth reading. Priest by Matthew Colville gets a B from me. Despite some elements that don't work entirely, there's a hell of story here driven by damaged and compelling characters.

(Another note from the editor, stories regarding failure can be fantastically important. We all enjoy stories where the hero wins and the day is saved, but we are but mere mortals. We make mistakes, we fail, we lose. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, how good our intentions, bad things can happen as a result of our actions. How we deal with our failures defines us as much as our triumphs, if not more so. Coming to terms with one’s failures is dreadfully important and something we rarely talk about openly, because we tend to see failure as an ending, a full stop, not a comma. To quote Dr. Manhattan, nothing ever ends. Life goes on and our failures affect not just us but the people around us, and until we face our failures and accept them, quite often more harm than good will come from it. We need to be able to move beyond our failures, not to ignore them or forget them, but to remember them so we can grow and become greater than we were. Not that we will never fail again or never cause harm again, but that we are willing to show the strength to stand up, tend to our wounds, and continue on with a little extra wisdom at our side.)

I’d like to thank our guest editor for joining us today while Dr. Allen takes a well-deserved rest (the retrieval squads will be sent after him Monday). Priest was selected by our ever wise Patrons. If you would like to vote for upcoming reviews, or recommend books for the review pile, then join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a dollar a month gets you a vote on themes, books and more! Hope to see you there soon.

Blue text is your editor Cameron Johnson
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.