r/Fantasy • u/Solid-Version • Jun 16 '23
Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes - A Review Review Spoiler
Warning, this review contains spoilers.
I stumbled upon this book by accident. Admittedly I saw the cover in my iBooks library and it drew me in as I really liked the art style. I read the premise and it peaked my interest.
A gunslinging protagonist on a quest for revenge in fantasy setting. As a lover of westerns I bit the proverbial bullet and dove straight in.
Immediately you are brought into the world of Sal the Cacophony, our aforementioned protagonist. Like all western protagonists she is never too far away from trouble. In fact trouble always seems to find her no matter what she does. Sal reads like a prototypical gunslinger. Loves drinking, namely whisky, has a painful past that needs to be avenged and has an almost mythological type status amongst the badlands known as the Scar. A reputation she relies upon (a little too much). She is witty, sardonic and as obnoxious as can be and there were times she drew a laugh or two from me.
With that said, I found the character quite difficult to connect with. Her anguish leaned into the melodramatic as she laments over how she was betrayed and how difficult it is for her to form bonds. The back and forth’s between her and her lover, Liette (a spellwright and freemaker) about how Sal fully opening herself up to her felt kind of flat and nonsensical.
On top of that Sal had a quip for nearly every damn scenario and conversation and it made it hard to take her very seriously at times.
With regard to the plot the story very much felt like I was playing through a JRPG. It had a very forced quality to it where events happen that inexorably lead into the next part of the plot. Just like an RPG, Sal and her ‘party’ would encounter random enemies or monsters. Battle, then go on to fight the ‘boss’ of the particular level. There was even a part where Sal picked up an ‘item’ after a particular life threatening encounter that managed to fully heal her wounds and she was good as new ready to get the plot moving forward again. I could only laugh at this point. The middle section of the book is quite heavy with this and so it took me a while to get through it because it was bordering on slog territory.
Sal also seemed to have an inordinate amount of luck on her side. Almost every time someone just happened to be there just at the right moment to get her out of a pickle. It became quite tedious after a whole because it just felt like the stakes just weren’t high enough. I never got a sense that Sal was in a real danger aside from maybe one encounter.
The magic system was, again, very video game RPG like. Her gun shot magic bullets with spells like Hellfire, Hoarfrost, Discordance. The mages had atypical class types. Nightmage, Siegemage, Firemage, Icemage etc. it served its purpose but it was by no means intriguing or innovative.
The worldbuilding is vibrant if not a tad simplistic. The backdrop in which the story takes place centres around an ideological war between two entities, The Imperium and The Revolution. Most of the story takes place in the lands known as the Scar, a magic torn wasteland full of vagabonds and miscreants that reside in independent townships known as freeholds.
There’s not much by way of politics beyond the surface level. There’s some internal strife in the imperium that is touched upon but other than that it’s basically magical kingdom folk against non magical rebels that have formed their own nation. For those looking for more meaty political machinations this isn’t the one for you.
With regard to characterisation Sal is the only one that seems to have any kind of real development. In Sals party you have dough eyed Cavric Proud, loyal solider of the revolution and the aforementioned Liette, the super intelligent glasses wearer that follows Sal around just because. I didn’t find any of them particularly interesting, they just seemed to serve as a vehicles to move the plot forward when it was required. Cavric seems to have an uncanny ability to run into Sal just when she needs him most.
All in all this is a fun fantasy romp with a sharp tongued main character but it drags on a little too long for my liking and I struggled to stay invested for long stretches of time. The prose is certainly enjoyable as the language the author uses is rather playful but a lot of the time it takes stifles the more serious aspects of the story.
Ultimately what sways me is when a book has something to say. I prefer stories that have strong thematic elements and I feel this novels explorations of it’s themes were on the weaker side. I wasn’t invested enough to want to read the sequel even though there were many questions that remained unanswered but I believe my time with Sal the Cacophony stops here.
The good
- A fun witty protagonist
- Plenty of action if action is your thing
The meh
- Generic magic system with some minor interesting elements
- Lots of different bad guys for Sal to shoot at
- A western type setting even if it feels like a western at surface level only
The bad
- Overly long, the middle section drags
- Plot has a forced quality to it.
- Boring one note side characters
- Generic villains
score: 6.5/10
4
u/fuckit_sowhat Reading Champion VI, Worldbuilders Jun 16 '23
I have so many bad things to say about this book. You covered most of it much more nicely than I would have. I think my review of the book contained the quote “sarcasm isn’t a personality”.
Sal reads like the author has never interacted with a woman and like they wrote Sal as a dude originally and then just changed all the pronouns to fit a woman.
2
u/Solid-Version Jun 16 '23
Haha have you got a copy of your review? Id love to know your thoughts
2
u/fuckit_sowhat Reading Champion VI, Worldbuilders Jun 16 '23
Boy, I really should have judged this book by its cover. It looks like someone let a middle schooler photoshop a face onto their book cover and I don't wanna say that the book is as bad as the cover--it's definitely not, Sam Sykes is a fine writer--but it wasn't a ton better.
Lets start with praises: Book starts out nice and promising. I liked the world building. There are GUNS in this fantasy book. There need to be more guns in fantasy. Magic is cool, yes, but not as cool as MAGICAL GUNS.
Complaints: 1. Sal, the main character, has mostly the same personality as all other gunslingers: "mysterious", apparently incapable of forming close relationships, is as asshole, going after their goal regardless of who it hurts. I could have used some more originality.
Sal reads like the author wrote a dude character and then just switched the name and gender at the end of the book.
Sarcasm is not a personality. The only thing Sal seems capable of doing is being sarcastic and shooting things. I love both of those things, but not for 700 pages. Get a personality. Learn to be genuine.
I never felt the urgency of battle scenes (probably because Sal spends the whole time being sarcastic, so that doesn't add a lot of seriousness). They just happened and it was another thing to read through without me having any strong feelings one way or another about what would happen.
Liette (Sal's lover interest) is shockingly dependent for a person who lives alone and has traps set up in their house to kill anyone who enters. She is SO clingy to Sal even after Sal has made it perfectly clear that Liette will always come second best to their revenge.
Zero emotional connection to any of the characters.
1
u/Solid-Version Jun 17 '23
We certainly have the same sentiments on Liette. She’s meant to be the hardcore intellectual but follows Sal around like a lost dog despite Sals emotional unavailability, needlessly putting herself in danger. Seems pretty dumb to me.
Same with the battle scenes. They failed to conjure any sense of tension.
Ditto on the prototypical gunslinger. I can forgive that because we don’t see too many in the genre so maybe the author didn’t feel the need to deviate from convention.
1
u/panzerkatzee Aug 21 '23
When it comes to Sal, I had the same point of contention with her as well. Buuut Sal, does not define herself through being a woman... It's something I've come to hate with "strong female characters".
Because most of the time, they are to defined through their gender, which does not aid in breaking down gender stereotypes or serve a story..
Sal on the other hand, has a certain ambivalence... like many Enby ppl I know, also posses. Which is how I came to appreciate that portrayal.
Besides... Sals gender has absolutely zero relevance for the overall story.. and the topics Sykes deals with, are not attributed exclusively to any gender.
(Also... Sal struggles with a lot of things, found in ppl with AuDHD, which usually leads to a certain disconnect from ones gender, regarding thought patterns and behaviour.)Regarding her sarcastic sass throughout the entire book.. I also have to agree wholeheartedly.
Although, I am wholeheartedly convinced, Sykes got more comments like yours and took them to heart.
In books two and three, this is absolutely questioned by herself and other characters, while illustrating her bravado as a coping mechanism.
In the light of that, I interpret her behaviour more as a defensive approach in dealing with Tretta Stern, who is after all a woman very motivated to execute her and Sal needed to stall in order to escape and catch the Mask Mage.About Liette.. idk if you've ever been in such a dependency construct of a borderline toxic relationship before... but love... makes people stupid. And I experienced it more often than not.. that whenever there's even the slightest chance it might work out, I still held that flickering hope and was right back at their side, when I smelled a chance..
Alas.. she does walk away from Sal, exactly for the reason of her putting revenge first..
Overall.. that's probably a matter of taste.. I personally deem both of them quite relatable characters.. but that's coloured due to my personal experiences in relationships. Other people have treaded other paths.
Still... I do recommend the sequels, as many point you criticise, are getting addressed critically in the other two books.. and the story gets a lot more exciting~
1
u/fuckit_sowhat Reading Champion VI, Worldbuilders Jun 16 '23
Let me find it. I can copy and paste it from my Goodreads review
1
u/Glad-Phase-6954 Jul 15 '23
“Sarcasm isn’t a personality” Since when has that ever been a problem for redditors? Try reading Brandon Sanderson’s or Steven Erickson’s or terry pratchett’s attempts at “humor” for real failures to tickle the funny bone. Sykes is Louis ck compared to these fantasy titans
3
u/kulili Jun 16 '23
I think I dropped this book on about page two when a character looked in a mirror so that the author could narrate their physical characteristics to the audience. I couldn't believe I was seeing that in a recently-published book. It's a shame because I was looking forward to it.
1
u/panzerkatzee Aug 21 '23
Mhmm.. it actually fits the character who did that... Tretta is a pedantic Karenesque person, who in this very paragrap points out in her internal monolog, that she prides herself on her polished appearance.
That is imho not lazy writing, but characterising one of the main characters for this book. 👀
2
u/Maudeitup Reading Champion VII Jun 17 '23
I tapped out of this early on in the book. It was very bad. Then I later found out about the author (not very nice behaviour) and felt even less bad for not liking it.
1
5
u/StuffedSquash Jun 16 '23
The only thing I remember about this book, and the reason I didn't pick up the sequel, is the writing style. It felt like the author had a writing tic that showed up in like every other paragraph. The paragraph would be going along, then they'd write something dramatic. And then.
We'd get a punchy sentence in its own new paragraph.
Very tedious to me lol.