Retro Review: The Sword of Angels by John Marco

Here's the last of my retro-reviews for John Marco's first three novels in the The Bronze Knight Chronicles sequence.

With The Sword of Angels, John Marco brings the tale of Lukien, the Bronze Knight, to a close. The flawed, yet noble, knight has seen much in the two previous novels (The Eyes of God, The Devil’s Armor) and his trials are far from over when we meet up with him again in this massive tome. When last we left the cast of characters, Baron Glass was lording over Liira in the Devil's Armor, with Jazana Carr as his consort/queen. Gilwyn Toms, the young librarian, left Jador in hopes of saving Glass's soul, and Lukien was in search of the mythical Sword of Angels. At just over 900 pages, this is a large novel, and Marco uses all the pages to nicely bring the plot threads, cast of characters, and elements of the previous two novels together rather nicely. 

Marco has a knack for opening his stories with oversized vistas on a large canvas. The opening passage in this novel is no different and sets the tone for the whole novel, I think.

"The Desert of Tears seemed eternal, like an ocean, stretching the corners of the world."

The world Marco has laid out is expansive, and the scope of action and cast of characters equally epic. This nearly dwarfs the reader in comparison, serving a warning that there is much in front of them. In the case of Marco’s writing, this is a good thing, for his tale does not stutter or slow throughout.

In this fantastical world, through the use of enchanted objects, people can bond with Akari who have passed on from the world of the living. Often, the bond is a benefit to the living person, granting them extended life, or magical powers and abilities. In the case of Lukien, he has been wearing one of the Eyes of God since the first book in the saga, which grants him long life and an incredible ability to heal any wounds. While Glass destroys all would-be challenges to his power with the Devil’s Armor, Lukien searches for the Sword, a sword inhabited by the Akari Malator, the brother of Kahldris. Many, many years ago the two brothers had a falling out over the Devil’s Armor, created by Kahldris for Malator’s use in defending the Akari. To say Lukien is a reluctant hero is an understatement, he wishes only for his long, scarred life to end so he can finally meet with his beloved Cassandra in the afterlife.

I found it somewhat interesting that while the title of the novel is of Lukien’s sought after sword, Marco spent as much, if not more, time in focusing on the character of Baron Glass, and his relationship with Kahldris, the dark Akari with whom he shares a bond through the Devil's Armor. In each scene featuring Baron Glass, we can see him descend deeper into insanity and corruption as he continues to feed and be fed by the Devil’s Armor. The Baron's struggle with Kahldris is one of the strengths of this novel, that while the milieu of their struggle is the fantastical enchanted armor, the essence is a very human one. A struggle of control of oneself, a struggle for power and doing whatever you feel is necessary to meet your ends, regardless of the consequences. In Glass’s ambition for his own good, he has become blind to what serves the greater good, and his blindness and lust for power are palpable. He wants to return his land of Liira to its former glory. In essence, Thorin has become a force of nature out of control, falling ever more under the sway of Kahldris.

In previous reviews, I’ve mentioned how well Marco is able to give most, if not all, characters a sense of believability. That is, you know Glass is corrupted by the Devil’s Armor and that he has performed some very despicable acts. However, Marco, at least early on in the novel, portrays Glass as a very convincing character, making his plight almost understandable. Other characters, like King Lorn, once known as King Lorn the Wicked, who were not exactly pleasant, now come across in a more sympathetic light. He makes all the characters convincing of their plight, which in turn makes the characters more humanely drawn and less of the simplistic good vs. evil cardboard cutouts.

So, keeping in mind that this is a concluding volume in a three-book sequence, does Marco deliver on the promise of the previous two volumes? Yes, I truly think he does. As I indicated above, in the justifiable size of this novel, he does a more than commendable job of tying up the plot threads he scattered in the previous two volumes. How does this stand on its own, judging it as a single novel? Knowing what has happened in the previous two volumes makes it somewhat difficult to give a concise positive or negative. However, there have been a couple of years between the publication of The Devil’s Armor and The Sword of Angels, so I don’t remember the specifics of the previous events, merely the generalities. Quite frankly, the summation on the back of the book does a decent job of bringing readers up to speed; however, a page or two briefly recapping the previous two volumes would have been very welcome (as is the case with Tad Williams’ novels, also published by DAW as well as Donaldson’s Covenant novels). I was also a little disappointed not to see a list of characters in an appendix, especially considering the sizeable cast Marco created. Of course these are just nitpicks and don’t really detract from the overall quality of the story Marco put to the many wonderful pages of this fantastic novel.

Marco threw a nice curve ball towards the end, unfolding some events unexpectedly. Despite the strong sense of closure, Marco left the door open should he ever choose to return to these characters. To sum up, this was a very enjoyable novel and a great wrap-up to an entertaining series. With the trilogy complete, I can fully recommend all three novels.

Retro Review: The Devil's Armor by John Marco

Here's another review from the archives, originally posted to SFFWorld back in 2003...

John Marco's The Devil's Armor, is a direct follow-up to his first hardcover release, The Eyes of God, picking up the story of the characters’ lives where we last left them. Lukien, the Bronze Knight resides in Grimhold, stoic sentinel of the legendary land of the InHumans; Baron Thorin Glass, having left the renegade Jazana Carr, settles into a tenuous residence there as well. Gilwyn, the hobbling Librarian's Apprentice, is now regent to Grimhold's neighbor, Jador.

Spoilers for The Eyes of God follow

Marco starts this novel with a similar, if truncated, plot device as he employed in The Eyes of God, to start this novel. We see the ending of Jazana Carr's years’ long struggle as her forces finally conquer the land of Norvor, ruled by King Lorn. King Lorn “the Wicked” flees his nation with his infant daughter Poppy as nearly all he held precious and trusted implodes. Though somewhat graphic in the early scenes, the investment of emotion and display of intensity set the mood for the course of the novel. Marco re-introduces the primary characters, and reveals more layers of the magical land of Grimhold. With the climactic battle at the end of The Eyes of God, many now know Grimhold is a reality, and not just a mythical realm to dream about. Pilgrimages are undertaken by many who are suffering and wounded in the after math of The Eyes of God, simply feeling it is their right to receive the marvelous benefits of Grimhold. Such is not the case; these people have little understanding of the Akari, the undead residents and source of magic in Grimhold, and their limits.

With Akeela (the king from The Eyes of God) dead, Marco invests more time into the characters of Baron Glass and Minkin, the maternal leader of Grimhold. We see more of their inner strengths and weakness as the crises come to the doorstep of both Grimhold and eventually, Glass and Lukien’s homeland, Liiria. How Marco naturally plays out each character’s crisis seamlessly unfolds more layers of each character’s personality. Baron Glass, justifiably fearful of Jazana Carr's promise to invade Liiria, struggles with the temptation of the titular Devil's Armor, an indestructible suit of glistening magical black armor. Though much of it is veiled in dark mystery Minkin dutifully informs Glass and Lukien of the toll it exacts on its wearer. Very little is said about the toll it would exact, excepting for the magnitude. Not very much is seen of Lukien early on, as he patrols the borders of Jador and Grimhold, fighting of raiders of all sorts, with Gilwyn acting as regent of Jador. As the plot unfolds, the titular Armor is only hinted at until the midpoint of the novel. From that point, the characters begin their convergence, again for both the greater good of the people involved and their own personal reasons.

What Marco has always excelled at in his previous novels, is again, a highlight in this novel. Regardless of the character, be he/she a despot, a thief, a turncoat, a bold warrior, a brash young man or a insipid young girl, John Marco makes you trust the character. He makes their story and reasons for their actions, while not always wholly approvable, nearly always understandable. For example, throughout the novel, Jazana Carr is portrayed as an evil witch by the people of Liiria, Grimhold, and Jadar. When scenes of Jazana Carr arrive and we see her motivations and reasons, she doesn’t come across as the witch the other characters maker her out to be. What this does is play not so much a struggle against good and evil, but of two strong sets of characters, with believable motivations and understandable reasons for what they do. While there are great deeds of evil and scenes of cruelty and death, the characters themselves are not cardboard flat ‘evil’ characters, they are real people with real motivations, and most importantly, real weaknesses.

The character of Lorn also has a maligned past as a wicked tyrant. In his arduous struggle against Carr, he has been starving his people, becoming a despot and bled his nation dry. While this may indeed be the case, the hardships Marco pulls him through breathes life into the character, shedding a light of goodness on the character. An example of this is how he deals with his daughter Poppy. Being born deaf and most probably blind, children with such disabilities have their lives ended at birth in Lorn’s native land of Norvor. Lorn could not bring himself to do this, as he cares for her as any father would. Perhaps he sees her as his means of redemption, more likely, it is his love as father shining through, not even considering this sort of emotional display as redemption. As Lorn’s journey through the novel progresses, he continues to impress those he meets, breaking the proverbial mold of what they thought to expect from him.

Another of this book’s strengths is the depth Mr. Marco invests into the magic inherit in Grimhold, the ‘dead’ race of the Akari and their bonds to the InHumans. A major portion of the novel takes place in Grimhold, and we see more of the inhabitants, get to know more of the history behind the people only glimpsed at in The Eyes of God. A triangle of love/obsession and power traps a few of the characters, binding them into their ultimate fates.

How does this novel compare to its contemporaries? From the novels published in the genre this year (2003), it easily holds up quite well. There is a sense of epic about this novel, as in the best of fantasy novels, yet you get a sense of Marco holding back, not revealing his whole hand, in terms of what can be told in this world. The sense of wonder in the Grimhold scenes, the scenes of the battle against Azar, all equate to a fine, entertaining reading experience. There have been quite a few worthy epic fantasy novels published this year, and Marco’s novel, along with Greg Keyes’ The Briar King, stand out as greats among this year’s offerings. Both novels illustrate the grandness of scale in the epic work, while still managing to focus on each character, giving them a sense of uniqueness in the novel; an individuality in a genre otherwise wrought with overstated clichés. In both Keyes and Marco’s novels, despite the epic-ness of the events, the characters stand out on the same grand scale of the story.

As the novel draws to a close, it becomes evident the whole story will not end in this volume. This may be my only complaint; while The Eyes of God was pretty much a standalone, with the possibility subsequent volumes, Marco leaves no doubts of future volumes following The Devil’s Armor. At its heart, though, this is a novel about people, and the human spirit. Yes there are magical trinkets and talismans, yes there are bonds between the living and unloving and yes there are creatures nonexistent in our world. However, what drives this novel are the characters --- what brings them to the brink of self-destruction, the lengths they will go to redeem themselves and their lands. In all of this, John Marco has again illustrated why he is one of the preeminent novelists at the gates of fantasy literature. With The Devil’s Armor, John Marco continues to build his reputation as an Epic storyteller.

Retro Review: The Eyes of God by John Marco

This is the first of a series of older reviews I wrote and posted to SFFWorld that I’ll be re-posting here on my blog in my effort (as I said the soft re-boot post) to have a more centralized location for my reviews and ramblings and to also make this blog more than "Rob's Blog O' Stuff I Got Sent." Also, this review in particular is the first of three reviews of John Marco’s Bronze Knight Chronicles I’ll be posting leading up to my review of his latest (April 2013) novel featuring Lukien, The Forever Knight.

I wrote this review over a decade ago, in 2002, when The Eyes of God first published. It was John Marco’s first hardcover release and introduction to the character of Lukien the Bronze Knight.

Also of particular note, the beautiful character-study of a cover was created by the late Keith Parkinson in one of the last pieces of art he created.

So, here’s what I had to say about a dozen years ago, slightly edited. I’ve not changed too much, but it is interesting (for me at least) to see where I was as a book review then and how I write them now (hint, I got better):

Buy this book and read it. There, that’s why you’re really reading this review right? Well you probably want to know why you should read this book. The characters are believable, the world and nations are mirrors of those in our own world. And magic, what would a great secondary-world fantasy novel be without a dose of magic? There’s that too, don’t worry.

Marco has created a world of wondrous lands such as the kingdom of Liira, the distant land of Jador and the magical land of Grimhold, home to the Inhumans, a group of strange people, each with their own special knack or ability. Add to this the shining Bronze Knight Lukien, his king Akeela, the magical Eyes of God and Devil’s Armor and you have some very key ingredients necessary for a secondary-world Fantasy novel.

From the opening sentence “He was a giant,” Marco immediately gives this novel a a sense of epic proportion. At the end of the almost 800 pages of this book, you will feel as if you’ve lived the triumphs of the Inhumans, the tragedies of Akeela, in the lands of Jador and the complexities of Lukien’s many choices. As big as this book is, every word, scene and word spoken by the characters is essential and necessary.

The novel begins with the end of a quest which is where many a story or novel ends. In The Eyes of God, we see what can happen AFTER the journey, when what characters quested after is achieved. To a great extent, Marco shows that the end of the quest is not the answer for which Lukien was searching, his life doesn’t exactly get easier once he secured that for which he sought. The answers get harder to find because the questions change.

The relationship between Akeela and Lukien is a strong one, as are many relationships with powerful, life-long bonds, whether they are on the same side or opposing sides. Raised almost as brothers, their friendship is perhaps the strongest and most defining aspect of this novel.

It was easy to empathize, almost sympathize, with even the character’s most despicable acts. Marco sets up so many events you expect to happen, only to twist your expectations into something better. None of these characters are defined by “good” or “evil,” rather by their strongest beliefs and reaching what they feel is the right thing. 

There were little things that Marco sprinkled throughout the story that added significance, just a few words while he was putting you in the heads of various characters. There is resonance of Arthur in Akeela, Lancelot in Lukien and Guinevere in Cassandra and of course Camelot a bit in Liira.

John Marco progressively gets better with each book he writes. There are some things in The Eyes of God that will remind you of his previous work, The Tyrants and Kings Trilogy, yet there is so much new and alive in this book.

With excellent characters, a gripping believable story and a world that comes alive off the pages, Marco has created an engaging and enjoyable fantasy novel. Ultimately this novel worked because I couldn't stop turning the pages and HAD to find out what was going to happen next.