On The Nightstand – The Traitor God – 6/16/2018

“Missed It By That Much”

Maxwell Smart

**Spoiler Alert**

I have to start by making it clear – I thought this was a good read – particularly true given that it was a debut novel – my second for the month of June – following “The Poppy War”:

http://booksofbrian.com/on-the-nightstand-the-poppy-war-6-2-2018/

I found it to be a far better book than R.F. Kuang’s “The Poppy War”.  My third debut novel for the month will be “Ravenmark” by Ed McDonald.  Once done with all three, I’ll profile them all and compare strengths and weaknesses.

Cameron Johnson did well with this one and I enjoyed it from beginning to end.  Having said that, it broke my heart a little because I think this could have been a truly great debut – a very memorable book – with just a few changes.  For me, two things stood in the way of a really special debut experience:  1) Johnson added complexities to the narrative that weren’t crucial to his story and served as distractions and 2) he just put too much into the climatic, final segment of the book…turning it into more of an exhausting marathon than a cathartic triumph for the protagonist.

Johnson started strong and kept me very tightly engaged for the better part of the book.  For a first novel, the writing is tight and crisp – his language is powerful and pretty evocative – I was able to picture the ugliness that is the City of Setharis.  There were a few instances where it felt a bit contrived – like he was trying too hard – but overall, a very well written book.  His characters – Edrin, Charra, Layla, his Mage / Archmagus colleagues, the petty and not so petty criminals you meet along the way – are all well drawn and interesting.  Johnson is obviously a talented writer and I’ve no doubt that I’ll be reading about Edrin Walker and Setharis again soon.

The world that Edrin Walker inhabits and its history is only sparsely characterized – but it’s more than enough to ground the story.  The only stage that matters here is Setharis, the system by which it’s governed and the mages that do the governing.  Johnson did a fine job bringing this to life and I did really find the city to be both fascinating and a creative, novel setting for a book.  Thinking as a writer, it occurred to me, as I was reading, that its not a bad way to approach a debut.  It ensures focus and minimizes distractions.

Walker is, for the most part, an engaging and interesting hero / anti-hero.  As the story unfolds, I couldn’t help but find him to be more likable than he finds himself.  In most cases, he does what I would consider to be the right thing – he just smashes a fair bit of crockery along the way and he’s more able than most to accept and embrace the collateral damage that results.  I found Edrin’s recurring, internal monologue about his perceived character flaws to be overly harsh and his decisions and actions, of which he is constantly critical, more a reflection of realism and appropriate situational awareness.  He does, in those critical moments when it matters, display an appropriate degree of loyalty and / or bravery.  Most significant is his determination to use his gifts in a restrained and ethical way.  He’s a guy I wouldn’t mind having a drink with and swapping stories.  Having said that, I don’t think I’d lend him the keys to my car or let him house sit for me.  Overall, I thought the guy was a bit too hard on himself and that proves out by the end of the book.

So…why the Maxwell Smart quote and the feeling that this one fell just a bit short of what it could have been?  Several thoughts:

• There are some elements to the story that I just didn’t feel to be completely necessary – particularly the presence of the Skallgrim and the Scarrabus.  They both exploded into the climax, took on an oversized role and, as a result, felt a bit artificial or distracting.  While I understand that they’ll both be important to later installments of this series – particularly the Scarrabus – I felt that Nathair and his blood magic construct – the Magash Mora – would have been more than enough to drive the climatic sequence in the book.  It certainly doesn’t break the story in any way.  I’m just suggesting that we didn’t really need the Skallgrim to be such a prominent part of the final chapters and I felt that the Scarrabus were not as skillfully introduced as they might have been.
• The climax in this book was far tooooo long.  First we activate the Titan, then we fight the Mogash Mora, while doing so – we wade through the Skallgrim and their blood magic shamans, then we confront and kill Nathair – the Traitor God – in an extended scene that has several phases.  I almost felt like I was in a computer game where I had to beat multiple Final Bosses to win.  The final battle with Nathair went on forever – almost like a fight with a Raid Boss in WOW – something that can take 30 minutes to an hour and is broken into phases.  For me, it just went on too long and it detracted from what could have been a really interesting final confrontation.  Again, it doesn’t break the book – in fact, I do understand Johnson’s need to use that scene to unload a huge amount of back story – but it subtracted something from the experience for me.
• Finally, just a couple of quick observations: 1) I was disappointed to learn that Edrin’s personality – the person we came to know and start to appreciate over the course of an extended narrative – was actually a construct of his old mentor – why give us Edrin, let us come to understand and appreciate him in all his tattered, compromised nobility – only to let us know that someone overwrote many of those character traits onto an earlier and less questionable character, 2) why establish Edrin’s awareness of the presence of Lyrras – Edrin’s friend whose death launches this entire narrative – in the amalgam of the Mogash Mora and not use that as a larger part of the final confrontation with that construct – it just seemed like a miss to me, 3) in the final battle with Nathair – Edrin’s use of the Shadow Cats seemed misplaced – a little contrived and unnecessary – there were so many things going on in that extended scene – I just didn’t see the need, 4) I was left a bit confused about the presence and role of Edrin’s soul bound dagger – Dissever – over the course of the narrative, it had been established and built up as an incredibly potent weapon but wound up playing no real role in the final battle – it was destroyed and dismissed almost as an afterthought yet preserved in some small part – likely to serve in future installments of the series, 5) the idea of The Imprisoned – a supremely powerful and dangerous entity imprisoned under the city of Setharis – both the source of the Five Gods’ power and their reason for being bound to the city – came at me from left field – no quibble with the concept – just one more thing thrown against the wall in the last 50 pages

I know this sounds a bit critical and I don’t really want it to – but they are observations I took away from the book – observations I would have offered up to Johnson as a beta-reader or an editor.  Overall, this was an extremely entertaining read, a very strong debut novel and one that was certainly good enough to leave me looking forward to the next installment of the series.  I’d recommend “The Traitor God” to anyone.