Demons continue to burn farmlands, violent mercenaries roam the wilds, and a plague is spreading. The country of Eidyn is on its knees.
In a society that fears and shuns him, Aranok is the first mage to be named King’s Envoy. And his latest task is to restore an exiled foreign queen to her throne.
The band of allies he assembles each have their own unique skills. But they are strangers to one another, and at every step across the ravaged land, a new threat emerges, lies are revealed, and distrust could destroy everything they are working for. Somehow, Aranok must bring his companions together and uncover the conspiracy that threatens the kingdom—before war returns to the realms again.
CW/ this review mentions some sad things about cancer & the death of a pet.
It seems like every other review I’m mentioning how stuck I’ve been & have a giant backlog of reviews to get to, and well…that’s certainly true. The short version of a very long/sad story is that I had to say goodbye to Wilson, my five-year-old Golden Retriever about three weeks ago. He had a cancerous mass in his esophagus that seemed to spread pretty quickly to other areas, and despite the Herculean efforts of multiple vets/specialists, and a pharmacy’s worth of medication/chemotherapy, there was just never any good news coming my way.
It’s been really rough, and I miss my friend so fucking much.
At some point in the thick of all that, I was reading a 630-page fantasy novel that had been on my TBR for ages. I’m not going to mention the book, but it’s an extremely unconventional fantasy novel. After reading more than 500 pages, I realized this book was bringing me no joy at all, at a time when I badly needed to be able to really love & connect with a book. My life had become a seemingly-endless string of trips to one of three different vets/animal hospitals, and it was such an exhausting & helpless feeling.
Around this same time, Justin Lee Anderson’s THE LOST WAR came out…the version from Orbit, anyway. This is another great example of a self-published book getting picked up by a big publisher! THE LOST WAR won the SPFBO in 2020..I actually have a copy of the self-published version but decided to wait & read the Orbit edition!
And yeah, THE LOST WAR was just calling to me…I was desperately craving a faster paced fantasy novel with a ragtag group of travelers at the heart of the story, and I got that & a whole lot more from this book.
The whole structure/bones of this story are definitely quite a bit different from what you might expect: it’s like the central conflict/battle that would usually be the culmination of a fantasy novel has already transpired. We’re sort of trying to understand this world while it sorts itself out after a great calamity.
The book uses the history & mythology of Edinburgh as a jump-off point, along with a healthy amount of Dungeons & Dragons vibes.
Our main character is a man named Aranok. He’s the envoy to King Janaeus, and a powerful draoidh (mage). While the dust is still settling from the war, Aranok is tasked with assembling a crew to rescue and escort a deposed queen back to her own country. Aranok feels like he is wasted on such a mission, preferring to stay where he can keep an eye on the King. But the King insists, and the mission goes forward.
The country of Eidyn has been ravaged by war, and there are still many threats & dangers & outright horrors on the road.
Like actual, gnarly as fuck horrors. Legions of the undead. Creatures straight out of nightmares. Demons. A mysterious-yet-temporarily-vanquished villain named Mynygogg. There’s a whole lot of trouble waiting for Aranok and his crew on the roads and in the wilds of Eidyn.
I saw a quasi-viral tweet the other day, something about how “book reviews are not book reports,” and I’m trying to drill that mentality into my head a bit. I think sometimes I succeed on that front, and other times I’ll look back at a review & wonder why I spent so much time regurgitating the plot, just in my own voice.
This is my extremely unsubtle way of saying that I’m going to try and veer away from too many more plot details from THE LOST WAR.
There’s a decently large cast of characters, but I did want to highlight a personal favorite of mine. Samily is a knight in the Order of the White Thorns. That’s her in the white armor on the cover, sword across her shoulder. I really dug Anderson’s approach to this character, who has grown up in a really sheltered way. On the battlefield, facing literal demons, Samily is a ferocious whirlwind of death. But sometimes day-to-day interactions with people can seem really challenging for her. She has an incredibly direct, plain-spoken way of interacting that sometimes leaves her fellow travelers a bit stunned. There’s just something about Samily that stood out to me. I also think she’s written as canonically asexual, which is really cool to see in an epic fantasy novel!
I loved this book a whole lot. It’s very skillfully balanced…there’s no shortage of exciting/bloody action sequences, all of the characters feel distinct & authentic, and the book is also really funny at times. And more personally, THE LOST WAR kept me company during an incredibly bleak period, and that really meant something special to me. I’m so excited to see what happens to this amazing cast of characters next in THE BITTER CROWN!
Grimdark Dad 