Servants of War
STATS
Title: Servants of War
Series: The Age of Ravens (Book 1)
Author(s): Larry Correia & Steve Diamond
Genre: Fantasy (Military)
First Printing: March 2022
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises, distributed by Simon & Schuster
PREMISE & PLOT
World War I with mechs.
It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the selling point on the cover and the book flap, and the authors delivered on that premise.
The novel thrusts readers into an Eastern European fantasy setting. (This is more than general flavor. It is established early on that the setting is an alternate world, and the human nations were founded by people who filtered into this world from Earth over time. There are clear analogs for Russians, Romani, and Hebrews.) Two superpowers, Almacia and the Empire of Kolakovia, have spent generations engaged in trench warfare. Their objective is not actually to defeat each other, but to gain the resources and breathing room needs to invade their mutual neighbor, the isolationist and magically powerful land of Praja. The Almacians have superior technology. Kolakovia, however, has numbers, as well as a division of mechs powered by salvaged fragments of Prajan golems. These mechs are knows as the Wall.
The hero of our story is Illarion Glaskov. After his village is slaughtered by magical monsters, the entity known as the Sister of Nature tasks him with joining the Kolakolvian army. He is assigned to the Wall. The book follows his training, his time fighting in the trenches, and a mission behind enemy lines to destroy an Almacian weapons factory. Two other characters have regular POV roles: a secret policeman named Kristoph Vals and a sniper named Natalya Baston. While Illarion is our hero, Kristoph drives the plot. His machinations to gain political influence lead to him recruiting Natalya into his service and taking a personal interest in Illarion’s military career.
For the most part, the story focusses on the war itself, as seen through the eyes of Illarion and Natalya. Kristoph’s political maneuvering serves as a subplot that instigates key events in the main plot. However, the supernatural elements get their due. Illarion’s brush with the Sister of Nature and the magic that fuels the Wall get in-depth exploration as the story progresses. The exploration goes deep enough that I’m almost tempted to call it a subplot.
Which leads us to …
WHAT I LIKED
I feel like Servants of War is a good example of how soft magic can be effectively utilized. Within the setting itself, only the Prajans seem to have a firm grasp of the magic system. Everyone else is either trying to make use of magical elements that they don’t fully understand or studying the supernatural to catch up to the Prajans. Magic rarely solves the problems the characters find themselves in. If anything, it’s the opposite. Every time the Sister of Nature or a ghoul or a blood storm shows up, everything else is dropped while characters panic and try to save themselves from annihilation. The only exception to this is the Wall. However, while these mechs do solve problems, they operate by easily understood rules and have massive limitations, leading to new and interesting problems for the characters to solve.
The scenes of warfare are compelling. I am not a military fiction person, yet the military elements of this story were delivered in a way that was easy for me to follow. Emphasis was placed upon the experience of trench warfare rather than on tactics and strategy. The only stumbling block I encountered were the military ranks, which I’m pretty sure are all taken from the real-world Russian military, but the story explains them well enough that English-speaking audiences should be able to keep up.
WHAT I DISLIKED
Character development felt very janky. Illarion’s growth from farm boy to soldier was decent; other characters, as well as relationships between characters, tended to remain static for long periods before developing in abrupt spurts. The romance subplot in this story that advances from first blossoming to confession of love in seven pages. There’s a time skip of a few weeks in those seven pages, but that doesn’t fix the fact that we miss the progression. Another character, who is introduced as being thoroughly amoral, also had moments of conscience that didn’t mesh well with the rest of the characterization or that were so sudden that even the character was startled by it. One of his moral standards actually was established early on, but the execution of it later in the story was so clunky that I had trouble believing it anyway.
Exposition delivery – more specifically, exposition related to character motivations and perspectives – was awkward. Many times, we are bluntly told what characters want or feel. By itself, that’s not terrible. The problem is that the information is restated far too often. In at least one instance, we see a motivation demonstrated in a very effective way, only for the impact to be sucked out of the scene when the narration reminds us of the information we were just shown. I have no idea how Correia and Diamond handled the co-authoring process, but if I were to judge just by these awkward chunks of exposition, I’d have to assume they wrote alternating chapters and then didn’t proofread one another’s work to avoid redundancy.
One other minor point that bothered me was the structure of this novel. Like many fantasy books, the authors chose to split the story into three parts, each with their own cover page. Nothing wrong there – I happen to like well-structured and organized documents. The issue is that, while Parts 1 and 2 are part of the same novel, Part 3 feels like a jump to a completely different story. The story also introduces elements at the end of Part 3 that leave the novel feeling incomplete. Yes, this book is the first in a series, and we need sequel hooks, yet I can’t shake the feeling that this whole series was written as one long story and then sliced into chunks for printing, rather than written has a series of stories that each had a beginning and an end.
LESSONS LEARNED
I just spent 50% more words discussing what I disliked than what I liked. Despite that, I think feel like this book is an overall positive experience, and I don’t think that the things I dislike outweigh the quality of the narrative.
Two of the issues I identified are things I feel are a matter of personal taste. I suspect that the problems I identified were deliberate decisions by Correia and Diamond. I haven’t read anything else by either of these authors, but a quick glance inside the covers of Servants of War indicates that they are prolific writers with a great deal of experience. For an artist to get this kind of regular work, there must be a very devoted audience who either doesn’t mind or actively prefers the way that the book’s character motivations and structure are handled. After completing the book and taking some time to reflect, I realized that there are potentially two important lessons here with regards to satisfying an audience.
Understand Your Audience’s Habits
As stated before, I am not a military fiction person. I don’t know the reading habits of the typical audience member of this genre. However, I do know my father’s reading habits, and he loves military non-fiction. He’s the type of person who will typically work through a book a few pages at a time, usually before bed. It occurs to me that he might appreciate reminders of character motivations that, from his perspective, haven’t been mentioned for days or weeks.
Obviously, I can’t assume that my father’s habits are typical of the military non-fiction audience, and certainly not the military fiction audience. Still, this does make me think that the authors went into this book with the expectation that they’d be reading it in small bites rather than one or two longer sittings.
Understanding your audience is very important in all forms of art. Everyone has different tastes. The secret to success is understanding who the people who like your work are and what they enjoy, thereby allowing you to provide an experience that they will enjoy. Tastes can go beyond genre, vibes, and tropes. If you know that your average audience member has specific reading habits, it can’t hurt to cater to those habits.
Understand the Experience Your Audience Desires
I earlier stated that the plot of this book felt like a chunk of a larger story. It’s entirely possible that was the point: not in the sense of a single book within a series, but as a small arc within a serialized story.
I am very much in the camp that you should write for your medium. I wouldn’t have listed the structure of this book as something I disliked if I didn’t feel that each book within a series should have a definite beginning and end. However, I’m also not going to say that it’s impossible to capture a serialized experience within the confines of a series of novels.
Perhaps this experience is what Correia and Diamond wanted to capture. Perhaps when the second book of The Age of Ravens releases, I’ll feel like Part 1 of that book is a clear continuation from Part 3 of Servants of War, with minimal time spent to reset and reintroduce the audience. And if that’s the sort of experience their fanbase wants, good on them for accommodating it.
RATING: 7/10
Not my usual thing, but reading it was time well spent. I’ll probably pick up Book 2 when it eventually releases. I recommend you check it out, even if military fiction is not your thing. It was both entertaining and a good learning experience.
