The Daughters' War
The Blacktongue Thief series, Book 2
Christopher Buehlman
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since the goblins came to the human lands, two devastating wars have been fought, leaving large swathes under the control of the poison-wielding, man-eating enemy who farm and butcher humans like livestock - wars that took most able-bodied men and boys, and saw horses fall to a goblin-concocted plague. Now, the third war is fought with what remains... and with women and girls in armor. Among these is Galta, daughter of an affluent duke, who is part of a unit that will be field-testing an experimental new weapon: corvids, great flightless war birds created by powerful magic. Without a cavalry, creatures like corvids may be humanity's only hope to avoid enslavement and butchery - but nobody will know for sure until the Raven Knights are tested in battle... and even before they see a single goblin, politics and tensions may cripple the ranks in the long, bloody conflict that will become known as the Daughters' War.
REVIEW: The Blacktongue Thief had a certain dark humor about it, taking place in the aftermath of the Daughters' War and with Galta, a jaded veteran who worships a goddess of death, as a significant character. She clearly had a deep history behind her, full of loss and scars. This book is her story, a prequel about her first campaign as a Raven Knight and how she went from being a somewhat hopeful noble-born woman hoping to prove herself and turn back the enemy into the far more cynical outcast readers met in The Blacktongue Thief. Unlike the first volume, there is little humor or even hope to be found here, in a tale dominated by tensions and betrayals, where victories are few and happiness fleeting between devastating losses and gore-soaked battles.
Galta is a young woman raised in the shadow of the goblin wars; her father was crippled fighting the "biters", and she has watched the family's lone surviving horse age even as she herself grew up. She proved capable as a swordswoman and eagerly joined the ranks of the experimental Raven Knights, willing to do anything in her power to defend her homeland, having no idea how fateful that decision would be. Her three brothers are all also part of this campaign in varying capacities, from a wizard's assistant to a decorated general to the drunk and corrupt heir in a unit of irregulars. though bonds between them can be complicated and tense. The war has Galta working side by side with common-born young women, a blurring of traditional class stratification that creates some problems within mankind's armies in ways that figure heavily into later developments; while the goblins are a devastatingly devious and inhuman enemy, one whose very nature precludes any manner of lasting peace or coexistence, humans being stubbornly and blindly human accounts for far more losses than anyone, especially anyone in the upper echelons, will ever admit. As Galta experiences a harsh coming of age in combat, she also has the first stirrings of passions, first with a common-born fellow Raven Knight and later with the one who will prove so pivotal to events in The Blacktongue Thief, even as she unexpectedly finds enlightenment in the doctrines of the goddess of death - a far cry from the sun god favored by her family and many noble houses, but one whose worship makes much more sense to those facing the gruesome realities of war firsthand. By the end, Galta is a far cry from the woman she was at the start of the grueling campaign, having lost almost everything she once held dear and even several things she didn't think to appreciate until they were torn away.
The story takes a while to get moving, introducing its characters and concepts and world; the land itself may be the same as the one in Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief, but nobleborn Galta's life experience is worlds away from Kinch the thief, and this Galta is far from being the woman he encountered. (It's also been a while since I read that book; the author does a good job not assuming the reader remembered every detail, filling in relevant aspects as encountered.) The reader also gets to see more of the war corvids, intriguing creatures with surprising, if always inhuman, intelligence; this is essentially their origin story, their first test in combat, mankind's first hint of hope against the goblins since the devastating loss of horses. (It goes without saying that results are... complicated, to say the least.) Buehlman explores some interesting themes and ideas in Galta's journey, enhanced by additional notes now and again, such as journal entries from one of her brothers who serves the great and eccentric magician who created the corvids and other "mixlings", and sometimes letters from her father, who loves his children but doesn't really see them or understand them in that way of parents everywhere, blinkered by nostalgia, rank, and tradition. A few characters wind up feeling conspicuously flat, particularly Galta's boorish eldest brother, but most people become tantalizingly rounded and deep.
While there were times the story meandered and felt like it was reveling in its own despair and violence, overall it's a worthy companion to The Blacktongue Thief, a dark examination of the devastating ramifications of war.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
Bloody Rose (Nicholas Eames) - My Review
Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
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