Synopsis: A politician's got lost in the secretive world of a superficially happy state. Behind the curtains, there are ugly ghettos, and a police state with hidden dictatorial rulers. The three main characters find their way through the impenetrable surface in different angles:
See that armed girl on the cover? Red and fiery is Evie's part, just like the cover indicates. She is a drunk brawler forced into the eponymous Savage Legion, cannon fodder in the battles for the expansion of the country.
Lexie represents the upper society in a Council of States. Her husband is missing in action, and her House is endangered of being shut down. She needs to counter the political maneuvers and wants to find her husband.
Slider nearly found her way into the Savage Legion, as she was grabbed from the city's slums. Lucky for her, the crippled girl was put into service of a cloister filled with inventors. They find that she's too intelligent for messenger services and put her under a few tests to find out where she's really good at.
After a longer while, the three threads start to interleave.
Review: "Hugo Award Winner" is a true statement, but shouldn't be confused with novel awards - Mark Wallace has got one for Best Fancast, i.e. best non-professional audio/video periodical devoted to SF&F. The author is well connected and loved in fandom but that has nothing to say of his qualities as an author.
Having said that, I nearly DNFed the book after some 25%, as I started to skip half pages. I was too confused and even bored by the novel, couldn't relate to the characters. Usually, that ends in a DNF, but this book is the rare exception, as it made an astonishing comeback with my reading attention. Somehow, it started to get interesting, and from 50% onwards, I was in a reading flow and didn't stop.
Evie's scenes dive deeply into military fantasy. The fighting descriptions are very detailed, and the author doesn't hold back with guts&bloods&brains dangling from opponents' remains. If you like some splatter, there it is. At least, the author spares us pornographic scenes, the rare sexual encounters are far more reluctant than the fights, and that is a blessing; I'd call this a mild romance suspension.
Chapters with Lexie concentrate on the Urban and social criticism - police state vs. underclass, and a kind of Council of States. It doesn't go very far there, and the whole construction with the rulers behind the secretive police state isn't very believable.
Slider's chapters are funny with all their innovations and tests. They fulfill a classic trope of trainee going through stages. But it took a very long exposition, after which it takes a harsh short cut and took different turns. The outcome didn't work for me.
There are a couple of interesting side characters. The only one I didn't understand was Lexie's husband who got a prominent role as a motivation for the whole book, but was given a shallow place in the background only. His relation with other actors was slippery and didn't come to fruition, and I had to scratch my head where I should place him. Maybe he's up for a more prominent and interesting part in the second volume?
One other support character, Lexie's bodyguard Taru, fills a shallow LBGT+ role: an impressive fighter is challenged at every police inspection, as they are "Undeclared", i.e. non-binary gender, which is frowned upon in the oppressive state. I understood this role quite well after the first or second iteration, but could have lived without more repetitions of challenging calls and explanations.
An additional thing that I noted were the awesome, hillarious chapter titles: "The Mourning After" indicates Evie's hangover, followed by "The Knight Before". Most titles don't give much away but are funny in retrospective.
I love it when first books in a series are kind of standalone, when they close most of their threads, don't have cliffhangers, and open up in complete different ways for the next volume. This start of the series "Savage Rebellion" hasn't got that quality, and it is very clear that it asks for reading the next - yet unnamed - volume.
In summary, the novel has its problems with pacing. But I really enjoyed the second half and I'm glad that the book took its chance to persuade me and suck me in again. Recommended for fans of gory military action fighting for an oppressive country. Just give the story a while to unfold its treasures.
See that armed girl on the cover? Red and fiery is Evie's part, just like the cover indicates. She is a drunk brawler forced into the eponymous Savage Legion, cannon fodder in the battles for the expansion of the country.
Lexie represents the upper society in a Council of States. Her husband is missing in action, and her House is endangered of being shut down. She needs to counter the political maneuvers and wants to find her husband.
Slider nearly found her way into the Savage Legion, as she was grabbed from the city's slums. Lucky for her, the crippled girl was put into service of a cloister filled with inventors. They find that she's too intelligent for messenger services and put her under a few tests to find out where she's really good at.
After a longer while, the three threads start to interleave.
Review: "Hugo Award Winner" is a true statement, but shouldn't be confused with novel awards - Mark Wallace has got one for Best Fancast, i.e. best non-professional audio/video periodical devoted to SF&F. The author is well connected and loved in fandom but that has nothing to say of his qualities as an author.
Having said that, I nearly DNFed the book after some 25%, as I started to skip half pages. I was too confused and even bored by the novel, couldn't relate to the characters. Usually, that ends in a DNF, but this book is the rare exception, as it made an astonishing comeback with my reading attention. Somehow, it started to get interesting, and from 50% onwards, I was in a reading flow and didn't stop.
Evie's scenes dive deeply into military fantasy. The fighting descriptions are very detailed, and the author doesn't hold back with guts&bloods&brains dangling from opponents' remains. If you like some splatter, there it is. At least, the author spares us pornographic scenes, the rare sexual encounters are far more reluctant than the fights, and that is a blessing; I'd call this a mild romance suspension.
Chapters with Lexie concentrate on the Urban and social criticism - police state vs. underclass, and a kind of Council of States. It doesn't go very far there, and the whole construction with the rulers behind the secretive police state isn't very believable.
Slider's chapters are funny with all their innovations and tests. They fulfill a classic trope of trainee going through stages. But it took a very long exposition, after which it takes a harsh short cut and took different turns. The outcome didn't work for me.
There are a couple of interesting side characters. The only one I didn't understand was Lexie's husband who got a prominent role as a motivation for the whole book, but was given a shallow place in the background only. His relation with other actors was slippery and didn't come to fruition, and I had to scratch my head where I should place him. Maybe he's up for a more prominent and interesting part in the second volume?
One other support character, Lexie's bodyguard Taru, fills a shallow LBGT+ role: an impressive fighter is challenged at every police inspection, as they are "Undeclared", i.e. non-binary gender, which is frowned upon in the oppressive state. I understood this role quite well after the first or second iteration, but could have lived without more repetitions of challenging calls and explanations.
An additional thing that I noted were the awesome, hillarious chapter titles: "The Mourning After" indicates Evie's hangover, followed by "The Knight Before". Most titles don't give much away but are funny in retrospective.
I love it when first books in a series are kind of standalone, when they close most of their threads, don't have cliffhangers, and open up in complete different ways for the next volume. This start of the series "Savage Rebellion" hasn't got that quality, and it is very clear that it asks for reading the next - yet unnamed - volume.
In summary, the novel has its problems with pacing. But I really enjoyed the second half and I'm glad that the book took its chance to persuade me and suck me in again. Recommended for fans of gory military action fighting for an oppressive country. Just give the story a while to unfold its treasures.