Seven Forges by James A. Moore is set up for an ongoing series, with the author showing us two cultures so different that one will be an existential threat to the other, and cast of traditional characters for this sword and sorcery fantasy novel.

Plot

Seven Forges starts with a bang.  Merros Dulver, retired from the Emperor’s army, leads an expedition to the freezing Blasted Lands, looking for any traces of the people who once inhabited the area before it was devastated by a mage war.  He and his band are fighting for their lives against Pra-Moresh, huge predators of the icy waste, when Drask, from the Sa’ba Taalor people, intervenes and kills the remaining monsters.

The plot thins after this, with isolated incidents that don’t flow together and no overarching conflict in the story telling sense.  The author sets up a major conflict that kicks off at the end of the novel, but dribbles out little fights that don’t tie together before that.

The expedition travels first to Drask’s land of the Seven Forges, then takes Drask and about 40 others of the Sa’ba Taalor back to the capital of the Empire to meet Emperor Pathra.  This begins the completely misunderstood engagement between the two peoples that is doomed to end in war.

Unfortunately the book falls flat at the point where Dulver and crew reach the Seven Forges.  Drask tells them that each Sa’ba Taalor does everything for themselves – crafts their own weapons, grows their own food, fights their own battles – and gives evidence that each adult is extremely capable with weapons and that every dispute is solved with combat.  The Sa’ba Taalor have gods that direct their actions and requires each to be self-sufficient.  Somehow Dulver doesn’t catch what this means.

The emperor, his wizard advisor Desh and Dulver all see the Sa’ba Taalor visitors as an embassy, a meeting designed to bring long term trade and good will.  They don’t realize that a people who sees everything as directed by their gods and to be resolved via violence will see the Empire as soft, as incapable, as undeserving.

The emperor agrees to let 10 of the Sa’ba Taalor go to Roathes, the southern country in the empire that is being invaded slowly by the neighboring Guntha.  The emperor believes the Sa’ba Taalor are there to scout the problem, confirm the situation.  The Sa’ba Taalor are there to “take care of the problem”, which in their lexicon means kill every Guntha on the shore.  Which they do.

At this point the wizard and Dulver wise up and realize they do not have compatible goals or understanding, that the Sa’ba Taalor do not value what the empire values.  And both get a bit suspicious and worried about their intentions.

Backstory and World Building

When I read fantasy novels I look for engaging characters, interesting backstory with tantalizing glimpses of what might be there, fun and fast moving plots, reasonable world building.  Seven Forges by James Moore has a good backstory but it falls flat.

First the idea that everyone is self-sufficient for food, for defense, for weapons crafting is intriguing but I kept wondering just how far that self-sufficiency extended.  Did each person mine their own ore and smelt it?  Did each one build their own house, weave their own cloth, tan their own leather?  We could see some cooperation among the Sa’ba Taalor who traveled to the empire, but where did they draw the line?

The fact that every one who wants something builds it themselves, yet that every dispute and every issue is solved by physical combat seems paradoxical.  In our world when violence is the only rule the weak are impoverished and we end up with warlords or gang leaders.

The Sa’ba Taalor demanded that the empire’s assigned ambassador, Andover, demonstrate his martial competence and stated that the Sa’ba Taalor would only respect him – and by extension everyone else – if he could hold his own with weapons.  The empire valued other things – the rule of law, the ability to solve problems with words and trade, commerce, art and music.   The Sa’ba Taalor see no reason to demonstrate their skills in the empire’s valued abilities, in fact it never seems to occur to anyone to show reciprocity.

Characters

The characters likewise lost their interest about a third of the way through.  I liked Desh the wizard and the emperor Pathra and Dulver was OK if two-dimensional.  The Sa’ba Taalor were boring.  You could substitute any generic bad guy/violent culture; the extreme self-sufficiency was the only novel point and as mentioned it didn’t make a lot of sense.

The character I like least is Andover whom the emperor appoints as ambassador to the Sa’ba Taalor.  This makes no sense.  Andover is nearly illiterate, about 18, unskilled, young, dumb, venal and gullible. Most emperors would appoint someone who knows something about the empire or its trade and can represent the emperor’s wishes.  The Sa’ba Taalor tell the emperor that their gods have chosen Andover, but why and why should that matter for something as important as the first ambassador to a neighbor.

Summary

Author Moore must have meant this as the set up for a series as we finally get to the real conflict between Sa’ba Taalor and Empire only at the end of the book and the whole thing feels like a set up.   Unfortunately Moore takes almost 400 pages to set up his world and the eventual conflict and after slogging through that much I really don’t much care.

3 Stars

(Amazon shows there are at least four books in the series now.)