The Maleficent Seven in Readers Unbound

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The Maleficent Seven

Cameron Johnston

Start date: April 2, 2022

Finish date: April 30, 2022

Why we're reading this: April Free For All Book of the Month Winner
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Apr 29, 2022 John rated it it was ok

Shelves: borrowed

This is the book of the current month (April 2022) in the Readers Unbound group, and I was attracted by the idea of a takeoff on Seven Samurai with evil-doers as the heroes battling an even greater evil. The title suggests it's a dark alternate to that earnest spinoff, The Magnificent Seven, and that would seem to bode well for levels of humor &/or parody.

My rating (two stars for "it was okay") tells you I'm one of the minority of reviewers who found it disappointing, though not entirely so. To This is the book of the current month (April 2022) in the Readers Unbound group, and I was attracted by the idea of a takeoff on Seven Samurai with evil-doers as the heroes battling an even greater evil. The title suggests it's a dark alternate to that earnest spinoff, The Magnificent Seven, and that would seem to bode well for levels of humor &/or parody.

My rating (two stars for "it was okay") tells you I'm one of the minority of reviewers who found it disappointing, though not entirely so. To put the worst first, I lost count of the times someone else died screaming in agony, often for a trivial offense or no reason at all. Torture and other cruel treatment are rampant throughout the book, and what doubles the trigger effect for me is the way the protagonists relished their victims' pain. Most of what I'm talking about came in quick scenes and even in throwaway lines, and they kept getting in the way of being able to enjoy the main story.

Disappointing also: there wasn't really much humor once you got past the basic idea. Well, Amogg and her orcs were kind of funny, and so was Tiarnach the former war god; their scenes were mostly fun to read. Those were two of the titular Maleficent Seven, and moving away from humor into straight adventure, I did enjoy the scenes with Verena the pirate queen and her magic-deadening slynx. Nor did I expect a parody to provide great depth of character in these anti-heroes or their enemies, so I can't say I was disappointed there.

But I found myself not caring whether any of the other four won or lost. That's the leader, Black Herran the demonologist who controls shadow demons and made a deal with their boss down below in Hellrath; Maeven the necromancer who kills with willpower and operates the resulting corpses as zombies; Lorrimer the vampire and master of torture (in too much detail); or Jarek the mad alchemist who gleefully sacrifices human test subjects by the dozen to test this or that supposition.

From those descriptions you'd think each one of the four could host a whole fantasy series--the basic ideas for the characters are superb. And each one will have a role to play in the struggle against the Greater Evil (religious fanatics with a poorly defined sort of magical power, who convert a few and kill the rest wherever they go as they build their empire). Until we get to their assigned roles, however, their many scenes along the way are just gory and repetitive. For the first two thirds this book was remarkably easy to put down and do something else--like read & review a different book!

Besides Amogg and Tiarnach, there was only one character I really liked, the plucky regular human Penny. Wading though all the nasty deeds of the protagonists, I finally found someone I could root for. In other books, she'd be the main character, but here her role is necessarily secondary. Too bad. She is a monument to human courage against impossible odds.

The steady, tedious diet of violence finally picks up into a climactic battle full of death and destruction, monsters, tragedy, and horror; some of the story comes to a conclusion, and other parts remain open for a sequel. ...more

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