to invoke his chosen pair of gods is strong, but he lacks the desire to prosecute the war he has been long awaited to lead.
So, too, do the figures on the other side of the war, Prince Rao,his lover, Narayani and his best friend Aayu, have doubts about the conflict and its prosecution.
Even with all of the doubts of these major figures, can a bloody conflict between two very different societies ever come to an end? And what would be the high price to pay to bring that conflict to an end?
The Black God’s War is a debut novel from Moses Siregar III, perhaps best known in genre circles as one of the triumvirate behind the Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing podcast and website.
The fantasy world of the novel strongly invokes real world mythology and culture. Although the deities themselves are different, the Lux Lucis, the ten gods of Rezzia, and their culture and practices are evocative of the ancient Greeks. They aren’t carbon copies of that culture, however, although Moses, a strong lover of mythology, clearly is invoking the Iliad and its tropes in the Black Gods’ War.
The Pawleons, on the other, felt a little less completely realized, but they, too, with their lack of deities but their unusual abilities remind me of post-Buddha South Asians and Indians. There are the slightest hints of other South Asian culture embedded into this cultural matrix as well.
The characters revolve around the royal families of Pawleon and Rezzia, and those close to them. The dynamics of the characters on each side are complicated, multi-sided, and most importantly, evolve and change over time. As Caio, Lucia, Ilario, Rao, Aayu, Narayani grow and change, their relations with each other change as well. I also particularly liked the clash of generations on both sideas, as the older parties and the younger parties have believable and well-drawn differences in attitudes, outlooks and desires.
The less central characters on both sides are a little less well drawn, even if their past and present actions are extremely crucial to the plot. The author keeps the focus pretty tight on the sextet of main characters and they get the lion’s share of development and care. While I do think that the Rezzian characters are a little more well drawn than the Pawleon, I suspect this is a consequence of Moses having written a novella excerpt of the novel first that focuses on the Rezzian side of the war, and having perfected that over time.
Theme is the strongest thing that Moses brings to the table. I’m not talking about the simplistic theme about the futility of war. Sure, that’s there, its clear, and it is a point of the novel. However, the author is not aiming solely at such a broad and wide target. Themes about friendship, loyalty, honor, the clash and conflict between generations, and most importantly, karma, strongly infuse the novel.
Theme is, to me, something that most writers do not and should not “write for”. I don’t think Siregar did that in the book. However, the themes evoked infused the novel strongly and is probably what I will take away most strongly from reading the book.
Another strength is that Siregar skates the line between description and purple prose to convincingly describe and bring the world and all that is within it to life. The use of quotes from the Iliad (and elsewhere) as chapter titles shows a clever use of language as well. The author does best when bringing the spotlight to people, places and things. He doesn’t overdo it, often, once described, the wonderful description earlier used will be briefly invoked, rather than hashed over again and again.