Seventh Decimate – Stephen R. Donaldson

Four stars is supposed to mean “I really liked it”, but in this case it means “I’m trusting Donaldson to deliver”. This book sets the stage for a larger story we just start to see by the end of this first book of “Great God’s War”. (We have no idea at this point who or what the Great God is or what the war is.)

The isolated kingdoms of Amika and Belleger have been at war - a horrible, destructive war - for generations. Nobody is sure what started the war and there seems to be no way to end it. The war is made particularly destructive by the use of magic - and one day the magic stops working. Prince Bifalt of Belleger leads a small expedition on a desperate mission to find the library that might exist and might contain the book that might enable Belleger to restore its magic before Amika can take advantage of Belleger’s weakness and destroy it.

This book is like the first Covenant trilogy in that the reader wants to take the protagonist and shake him until he stops being an ass. He acts on assumptions that have no visible means of support, and is blind to evidence to the contrary. The other main players don’t behave in ways that seem more sensible.

I’m going to read the next book when it appears - and recommend this one - because Donaldson has done this sort of thing before, with his Gap series, and made it work. The first book is like a miracle play: Two-dimensional characters step onto the stage and introduce themselves. For most of the first book the known world consists of two countries. But at the end the world is shown to be a lot more complex, and I’m trusting the author to make the next book build on this one successfully.