Shadow of the Conqueror (Part 2)

STATS

Title: Shadow of the Conqueror

Series: The Chronicles of Everfall (Book 1)

Author(s): Shad M. Brooks

Genre: Fantasy (Epic)

First Printing: July 2019

Publisher: Independently published via Shadiversity Pty Ltd and Honorguard Productions LLC

Rating: 6/10

SPOILER WARNING

Spoilers will be necessary to properly explore aspects of this story. I will mark “Mild Spoilers” and “Heavy Spoilers” at the start of each section as necessary, but the first paragraph will always be as spoiler-free as possible.

CONTENT WARNING (MILD SPOILERS)

This story contains multiple scenes of graphic violence, mild crass humor, plenty of swearing and cursing (albeit swears and curses that are unique to the setting, so I’m only listing it for completeness), and discussions of murder and genocide.  More importantly, it has a massive amount of sexual content.  While there is only one scene of mild sensuality, and the abundant nudity is handled in a non-sexual fashion, there is a massive amount of discussion about sexual assault, rape, and pedophilia, as well as discussion of an abortion.  These topics are not clinical, either – the point of the discussing them is the traumatic impact they had on the characters.  If you are sensitive to these topics, this book probably isn’t a good pick.

Now, as with Foundryside, I feel like at least a chunk of this content is included because of Shad’s tastes (or, in the case of the swearing, because he’s Australian).  However, unlike Foundryside, I didn’t feel unclean after reading this.  I felt a whole lot more uncomfortable than I had with Foundryside, but because these elements are crucial to the story, it didn’t feel like I was delving into Shad’s personal fantasies. There was at least a hope that something worthwhile would come out of soldiering through this content.

One thing is made very clear from the outset: among Dayless the Conqueror’s many crimes, he was a serial rapist, with it being clearly stated by the end of the book that his victims were as young as 14 years old.  These are crimes for which Daylen now feels immense guilt and disgust.  He projects his guilt into a vicious, violent hatred of sex traffickers, molesters, and other rapists.  He’s also actively uncomfortable around young women (who, given that his miraculous de-aging reverted his body from 82 to about 18 years old, find him quite attractive) because he sees his victims in them.  There’s a scene where he’s tempted to have sex with a 16-year-old who throws herself at him.  The realization that he’s still eager to gratify his urges makes him physical nauseous and leads to him yelling at the girl to get away from him.

Many readers will feel that Daylen’s past crimes makes him irredeemable as a protagonist and thus ruins their investment in the story.  I’ll get into this a bit more in the Characters section and in Part 5.  For now, I’ll simply say that, while I do understand this perspective, I think the Shad is also aware of it.  The story doesn’t cut Daylen any slack for what he’s done.  It is made very clear that he was the villain in committing these acts.

That said, there is one glaring aspect of this topic that could have been handled better.

Cueseg & Lyrah (Heavy Spoilers)

Some critics have accused Shad of making fun of rape and the trauma of rape victims.  I feel that this assessment is extreme, yet I do recognize the root of the problem.  His name is Cueseg.

Cueseg is a Archknight (a member of a holy order with light-based powers) who hails from the nation of Tuerase.  The Tuerasian people, despite outwardly presenting as sexual hedonists to foreigners (easily 95% of the nudity in this book involves Tuerasians), are extremely disciplined when it comes to controlling both emotions and personal desires.  They view everyone else as sexual hedonists, mistaking random displays of emotion by foreigners as expressions of sexual desire, and believe that exposing themselves as a form of exposure therapy that will help others to master personal desire.  As a result of this worldview, Cueseg is constantly making everyone around him extremely uncomfortable.

Now, by itself, this might just have been an annoying character quirk.  The issue is that Cueseg is used to further the character arc of his partner, Lyrah.  She is one of the girls that Dayless raped.  She is in her late thirties by the time of this story, but she has not recovered from the severe trauma of that event.

I’m sure you can already see where this is going.

Cueseg attempts to help Lyrah “master herself” through bringing up sexual topics and exposing him body to her.  She reacts negatively every time.  These scenes (and there are many) read like badly written comedy and outstay their welcome most of the time.  As soon as it becomes clear that Lyrah’s reactions are rooted in trauma, they become repellent.  Cueseg stops his behavior as soon as he’s aware of her trauma, but that’s not a fix.  The scenes still leave a bad taste in the mouth.

It's a shame because, after this second reading, I think that Shad’s intention with this dynamic is the exact opposite of what people accuse him of.  It is evident within the text that he wanted to explore and raise awareness about the lingering trauma of sexual assault and how environmental factors can set off that trauma.  There’s a scene where Lyrah nearly has a panic attack just from being in a slightly luxurious skycoach, as the mere quality of her surroundings reminds her of the opulence of Dayless’s palace.  There’s also a scene where Cueseg has a conversation with another character about how victims of sexual assault are unfairly stigmatized.  There were good intentions here.  It’s the execution that was botched.

I think that this might have worked better if Shad cut back on those scenes where Cueseg discusses sex and expanded upon the Tuerasian perspective in other ways.  For example, Cueseg often complains about the low quality of non-Tuerasian food.  Based upon context clues and his culture’s beliefs about controlling lust, I suspect that Shad intended for them to have a similar stance towards gluttony that they do towards lust.  Perhaps, if Shad put more focus on this, and thus better fleshed out Cueseg’s worldview, people wouldn’t have felt like the story was making light of a serious topic.

CHARACTERS (MILD SPOILERS)

All right, heavy subject matter aside, let’s get into the people involved in said heavy subject matter.  Characters can make or break a story by themselves – and, overall, I think characters are the strongest point of Shadow of the Conqueror.  They are by no means perfectly written.  I just think they work well for what this story is.

The primary cast of this story is surprisingly small, given the amount of ground covered within the plot.  There are many tertiary characters, but aside from our protagonist, there are only four secondary characters that get enough focus to warrant analysis.  The trade-off is that these characters get more nuance than one would typically expect of such an action-heavy story.

Daylen Namaran / Dayless the Conqueror

This is our main character, and arguably a greater source of controversy than Cueseg.

Dayless the Conqueror was, in no uncertain terms, a horrid tyrant. Years later, Daylen fully acknowledges and repents his many atrocities.  However, the Light denies him his wish to be freed from guilt through death.  Seeing that he has a new lease on life, Daylen vows to devote himself to doing good – but even as he sets out upon this personal crusade, he is constantly falling back into his own habits.

Good intensions don’t make a person more pleasant, though.  Daylen is rude, cruel, arrogant, and generally abrasive.  He has no scruples about flexing his power and experience to dominate others.  He also lacks the common sense to lie about his abilities.  He tries to spin himself as Dayless’s son, rather than Dayless himself, yet he continually talks down to people as if he were still in his 80s and routinely brags about skills that no teenager should have had time to accrue.

This will kill the story for a lot of people.  While a protagonist doesn’t need to be a moral paragon or even a likeable person, every reader has a breaking point.  There is only so much that can be done to convince us that we should root for a character to succeed.  Daylen is a good example of testing that limit.  It’s hard to support a protagonist who’s so unlikeable when he’s almost irredeemable – and that’s before one reflects upon his history of murder, genocide, and rape.  If you hated this book, or couldn’t even finish it, because Daylen made it impossible for you to get invested, I completely understand.

That said … repellent though he is, I think Daylen is a fantastically written character.  He’s what ultimately makes this book worth reading.  Shadow of the Conqueror is the story of a villain protagonist trying to become heroic in the way he thinks is best, and this appears to be very deliberate on Shad’s part.

We’re going to touch upon various negative aspects of Daylen’s writing in other sections (and we already touched upon his atrocities in the Content Warning section).  Here, I’d like to look at three specific criticisms that I’ve heard about Daylen.  I’d also like to establish why I think that all three overlook essential strengths of the story’s writing.

Criticism 1: “Daylen doesn’t read like someone who feels genuine guilt for his offenses.  If he really felt guilty, he would [insert action here].”

This is an understandable response to Daylen.  He had 20 years to surrender himself to the authorities after being deposed and going into hiding.  He did not.  At the end of his life, rather than dying peacefully, he chose to commit an elaborate suicide of his own design, leaving behind a confession letter and his memoirs so that everyone would understand that he had survived all this time.  When he gets his Archknight powers from the Light, he does not immediately join the organization, even though they are an obvious choice to provide him with guidance and direct his talents towards the common good.  He instead sets himself upon a crusade of his own choosing, treating joining the Archknights as something he’d do when he was good and ready.  (And, of course, he does not openly reveal his identity and surrender himself to the authorities after his renewal, instead pretending to be his own son so that he could cash in on the notoriety without facing the consequences.)

Most readers will want Daylen to be held accountable by his actions.  His decision not to give himself up willingly therefore makes it very difficult to root for him.  I myself was frustrated by this.  I really don’t like stories while supposed heroes do bad things and then say something to the effect of, “Well, putting me in jail would be a waste of my abilities, so let me continue to operate with impunity.”

However … Daylen’s choice to follow his own path instead of facing accountability is consistent with his flaws.

Daylen is extremely proud.  That pride drives him to prioritize his own agency over any moral or common good.  His elaborate suicide is itself proof of this: he wants to die in a manner that he devised, rather than letting old age, illness, or civil justice do the deed.  Once he is restored to his youth, this same pride drives him to run his mouth about his abilities, talk down to others, and appoint a crusade for himself.  His decisions may not be the ones we want, but they make sense in light of the type of person he’s set up as within the opening pages of the book.

This flaw is not incongruous with guilt.  How many times, in our own lives, are we unwilling to apologize or to accept fault, even if we privately admit that we have made a mistake or a poor choice?  It is human to want to reject consequences, especially when accepting those consequences would require humility.  Daylen’s misdeeds and debts are orders of magnitude beyond what most of us will ever need to atone for.  We may wish that he would submit himself for justice, yet his decision is not unrealistic.

Daylen is written in such a manner that showcases his guilt despite his pride.  We’ve already touched upon his breakdown when tempted with the opportunity for sex with a young woman.  It wasn’t the only instance.  At two points in this story, he brutally kills others in a moment of righteous fury, going far beyond what was necessary to self-defense.  In both cases, he realizes in hindsight that he made the wrong decision in the heat of the moment, reverting to the urges he indulged as Dayless.  He is horrified by what he’d just done.  When he meets Lyrah, he recognizes her as one of his victims, and while he doesn’t come clean about who he is, he finds himself struggling to interact with her due to his shame.

Coming back to how the story addresses his decision, Daylen is the only significant character who agrees with what he’s doing.  His spiritual advisor, Ahrek, tells him to surrender to the Archknights, and then doggedly follows him on his adventures to minimize the damage Daylen causes in the interim.  When the Archknights find out about him, it takes blackmail to keep them from dragging him back to their order in chains, and even then, they assign additional watchdogs to him.

The long and short of it is, the story itself establishes that Daylen is in the wrong.  This is clearly a deliberate choice of Shad’s part.  Pointing out that Daylen is doing something wrong isn’t an really argument against the quality of the writing.

Criticism 2: “Daylen’s villainy is not realistic. / Daylen reads as being mentally ill, and this is clearly not deliberate.”

I feel this argument is unfair.

Now, I do not have a background in psychology.  I can’t rule out the possibility that Daylen is written in a manner that suggests mental health problems.  However, the people who have presented this criticism to me did not provide a medical psychoanalysis or diagnosis.  They mere stated factors they could only associate with mental illness or said that he needed to be put down (“shovel to the head”, as one memorably put it).  This leads me to believe that this criticism isn’t rooted in psychology.

The simple fact Daylen’s villainy is incredibly realistic.  It is disturbingly, uncomfortably realistic.  It’s also presented in a manner that lays out how a mentally healthy person might follow the same steps that he did.

It’s all laid out in his backstory.  Within the narrative, Daylen wrote a confessional memoir about how he became Dayless and Conqueror, governed the Dawn Empire, and was ultimately toppled.  Extracts from that document are presented at the start of each chapter.  We are presented the full life story of a man who started as a war hero, became a revolutionary, and then descended into brutality and debauchery through a series of small steps over decades.

One specific accusation I’ve heard fielded with regards to Daylen’s mental health is that he is devoid of empathy.  That’s simply not the case.  As presented within that memoir, every one of his villainous acts learned on either a logical argument or a self-deception.  Every execution, along with the genocide he committed, was based upon a precise and logical objective.  It’s not like he didn’t understand or care about the value of human life; he had to rationalize every death.  Even his rapes were padded with excuses and justifications.  He admits that he lied to himself about having the consent of his victims (they were all acquired by members of his inner circle, allowing himself to preserve the lie).  He even made sure that those girls were of legal age so that he could assure himself that, at the very least, he wasn’t a pedophile (14 being the legal age of consent in the setting, though again, he admits in hindsight that this was unacceptably young).

In our modern age of anti-heroes and grey morality in fiction, a character could take one or even two of the steps that Daylen did and still not shift from hero to villain in the eyes of most of the audience. A villain we love to hate could also take a few steps without becoming impossible to enjoy.  What makes Daylen special is that he started at the very top and took every step to reach the bottom.

Another accusation comes from people insisting that no healthy person would treat women the way Daylen did.  This rings hollow to me.  The memoir makes it clear why Daylen devolved into debauchery and later rape.  One could argue that he is mentally ill in that respect, warped by his trauma, but if one wishes to go with that rationale, then Daylen isn’t badly written.  He’s reflecting his trauma in a manner shaped by his circumstances.

Now, in fairness, there is a scene early in the book where Daylen does not react normally to a horrific injury.  This has been pointed to as evidence of him being mentally ill.  Upon revisiting this scene, though, I think that Shad just didn’t want to linger on the visceral trauma in this moment.  There are also magical factors at play in said scene that quickly healed said injury.  Numb wonder is not exactly shocking in that circumstance.

Ultimately, Daylen is human.  He isn’t unrealistic, and he doesn’t read like someone devoid of empathy. Each of his is sins are tied into relatable flaws and decisions, and he needed to justify them to himself with self-deception, excuses, or external validation. He’s done far worse than most of us have ever done or ever will do, but that is not, in and of itself, unrealistic, nor is it bad writing.

I suspect that this is strong contributor to the negative reaction towards Daylen.  He showcases how any of us could tumble down a similar slippery slope if presented with the right sequence of decisions.  Given just how far he fell, that’s a very hard pill to swallow.  We don’t want to believe that we could ever make the same mistakes that he did.  Saying that he’s unrealistic or mentally ill is an easy deflection that allows us all to avoid hard introspection.

Criticism 3: “The story doesn’t hold Daylen accountable for his actions.” (Heavy Spoilers)

As stated a few times now, the story does hold Daylen accountable for his crimes and his flaws.  He is the only person who does not think he is the bad guy. The examples I’ve given are only small steps in the larger puzzle.  Even if they didn’t exist, the entire novel ends with condemning him.

After the climax of the book, Daylen finally submits to the authorities.  Multiple chapters are devoted to his trial.  It is a massive spectacle that takes weeks, due to his extensive list of crimes.  During that trial, someone whom he helped during the plot tries to get him recognized as a national hero for his good deeds.  The court votes to grant him this status, then promptly strips that status on account of his crimes against humanity.  It sends a very blunt message that good deeds, while worthy of celebration, do not erase bad ones.

Daylen’s final sentence is a punishment that perfectly fits his flaws.  He is not executed.  Instead, he is sentenced to a lifetime of servitude with the Archknights.

This may be a turn-off for many readers who believes he deserves death.  However, Daylen has been suicidal for the entire book.  The only reason he hasn’t attempted to kill himself a second time is that he firmly believes that the Light wants him to survive and serve the greater good (as he interprets it); when it actually looks like he might die, he’s fully ready for it. 

In light of Daylen’s flaws, servitude is the most narratively satisfying punishment that could be issued to him.  He tried to flee accountability for his crimes by killing himself.  He then avoided the Archknights purely to preserve his own agency.  None of that mattered in the end.  His agency was stripped away for the rest of his life (sure to be quite long, give his restored youth).

Ahrek

Ahrek is a Lightbringer (to use a D&D analogy, if Archknights are Paladins, Lightbringers are Clerics, or at least, Divine Soul Sorcerers).  A core aspect of being a Lightbringer is that their powers fade if they do not live as paragons of virtue.  Rather than telling us this rule and then expecting us to accept it, Ahrek demonstrates his devotion.  He is merciful, generous, and patient.  Throughout the story, he serves as Daylen’s spiritual guide, committed to ensuring that he does not become like his “father” (having bought Daylen’s initial cover story).  He is always ready to challenge Daylen’s many flaws, yet he never outright gives up on Daylen.  He’s also pretty badass.  He’s as skilled in swordsmanship as Daylen, and his Lightbringer powers give him means to solve problems that Daylen can’t handle alone.  They make a very good team.

On the flip side, there is a somewhat annoying running gag about how Ahrek is trying to crack jokes despite not being good at it.  The attempts themselves are not funny.  I don’t think that it ruins the character outright, yet it is something that might sour the reading experience for many people.

I wish I had more to say about Ahrek.  The truth is that he’s not that complicated.  There’s a twist near the end of the story where we learn more about his past, and that does give him greater complexity and nuance, but for the most part, he’s here to be the angel on Daylen’s shoulder.  I think that most complex interpretation of him would be to say that he is one of the actual heroes of the story, sent to “vanquish” the villain protagonist by guiding him toward true atonement.

Lyrah

Lyrah, as previously stated, is an Archknight.  She is initially tasked to hunt Daylen down once word spreads of a strange youth with Archknight powers.  Her quest leads her to confront the man who violated and traumatized her in her youth, bringing her closer to inner peace.

This character is the other character whom I’d classify as a hero.  Despite the trauma in her past, Lyrah continues to stand against the darkness in the world.  While her hunt for Daylen is clearly motivated by her hatred of his “father” and her insistence that any child of Dayless must be evil, she also has the strength to keep her trauma from overwhelming her, checking herself when challenged for taking things too far.

As mentioned in the Content Warning section, the execution of Lyrah’s trauma is not handled well.  However, this isn’t due to a flaw in her writing.  She is convincingly written as someone who have been through very painful circumstances and is making the best of things moving forward.

Much like Daylen, she is also very human.  One of the themes we’ll go over in Part 5 is redemption.  Whereas other characters express a willingness to forgive Dayless, Lyrah draws a hard line and refuses to do so.  Some readers may think that this is the right decision, given what Dayless did to her; others may be disappointed that she is still shackled by her trauma and anger.  I just see it as a human reaction.  As great a virtue as forgiveness is, it is a difficult one for people to practice, especially after living through the sort of things she has.

I’m not sure whether Lyrah or Ahrek is my favorite character.  Ahrek is outwardly more pleasant and enjoyable, and I like his dynamic with Daylen.  Lyrah, by contrast, gets greater depth, and the exploration of her character makes her more sympathetic.

Cueseg

Cueseg is another Archknight, as well as Lyrah’s partner.  After Daylen, he’s the character whom I’ve seen get the most flak.  Unlike Daylen, I can’t really defend his writing.

I do stand by what I said about him in the Content Warning section.  There were good intentions with this character.  Good intentions, though, do not excuse poor execution.  Where Daylen is an unlikable character who can be appreciated from a writing quality perspective, closer scrutiny of Cueseg just dials him back from offensive to irritating.

With that said, Cueseg does have one trait that I haven’t previously covered and that is rather interesting: his motivations for becoming an Archknight.

The lore of the Archknights states that their powers come from sacred vows made at a ceremony called the Vigil.  This ceremony involves a vow to the Light to be a servant of justice who puts the good of the world over ones’ own desires.  (Daylen technically did make this vow during his suicide attempt, which is how he assumes he survived and was restored.)  Cueseg, however, admits that he became an Archknight because he was an outcast among the Tuerasians.  Being an Archknight gives him status that prevents other Tuerasians from mistreating him.  It’s all about power and status for him.

This revelation doesn’t have a huge impact on the plot.  Lyrah reacts to it in a manner that suggests that it makes her hunt for Daylen more urgent, but it isn’t a twist that reshapes the course of events.  I just think it adds some much-needed nuance to Cueseg’s character.

Sain and Sharra

I mention these two because they are present for roughly half of the book.  Sain is a young man whom Daylen liberates from forced labor under a pirate captain.  Sharra is the aforementioned young woman who tries to sleep with Daylen after he liberates her from human traffickers.  I don’t have much to say about either of them outside of that.  Each has a role to play in the plot, and they fulfill those roles.  They don’t get enough focus to have depth or nuance, but neither are they unlikeable.

END OF PART 2

That was a lot to digest, wasn’t it?

As I said in Part 1, rating this book has been a strange experience.  There are genuinely brilliant elements that co-exist within and alongside incredibly frustrating ones.  There are also elements that are objectively well-written but are highly unpleasant through a subjective lens.

Daylen might ruin this story for a lot of people by the sheer weight of his villainy.  I stand by my defense of him as a well-written character, but sometimes that’s just not enough to make a character worth reading about.  Most of us read for enjoyment, after all.  Liking the protagonist is a key aspect of that experience.

As we’ll see next week, this oscillating quality is an ongoing trend.  Join me as we explore the power fantasy and how Shad handles worldbuilding and exposition.  Thanks for stopping by.