Early Review – The Maleficent Seven by Cameron Johnston (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot
Release Date: August 10, 2021
ASIN : B08N6TX8LN
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from Edelweiss
Rating: 3/5 stars
“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.”
Series Info/Source: As far as I can tell this is a stand alone book (although there is definitely potential for additional books based on the ending). I got an eGalley of this book to review through Edelweiss.
Thoughts: This is kind of like an evil character based Dungeons and Dragons campaign. There are loose reasons for these characters to hang together, but a lot of backstabbing happens too. It actually feels a lot like fanfic. The plot is very predictable and there wasn’t much actual story driving anything forward.
The pace is fast; we spend the first third or so of the book collecting our evil characters together. Then the rest of the book is spent on a huge, long, epic battle. There is some character development early on and there is some effort to kind of humanize these evil characters. However, it quickly degenerates into a long, gruesome series of battles that feel a bit shallow.
The book is decently written but there are so many action and battle scenes that don’t have a lot of impact on the overall story, that I found myself skimming portions (oh, look someone else was eviscerated…oh, wow more eyeballs were removed and eaten). I also did notice some editing errors and typos throughout (bowls was used in place of bowels, etc). So, the editing here could have been better.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this had promise and if you are looking for an evil-based battle-driven fantasy book, this isn’t a bad one. It does lack character development and the intense battle scenes are so numerous they start to feel repetitive. At the end I didn’t have any attachment to anyone and was mostly just ready to move on to a different book. While I didn’t hate this, and even enjoyed a lot of the setup, I don’t think I will be coming back for more.
