Tuesday, May 11, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Blackwing War by K.B. Spangler

 





The Blackwing War is the first in K.B. Spangler's Deep Witches trilogy, a SF/F series she's been working on and occasionally tweeting about for a long time.  Spangler is best known for her A Girl and her Fed webcomic and its related spin-off novels, as well as for her amusing social media presence, which I've enjoyed quite a bit.  In 2017, she released Stoneskin (which I reviewed here), which she described as a "prequel" to the Deep Witches trilogy, introducing the central concept of the series and its main character, Tembi Stoneskin.  I liked Stoneskin a bit, and really was interested in the story's potential, so I was excited to try and read the start of the series proper when it came out this year.  

And The Blackwing War is a really interesting, often strong novel.  The novel deals essentially with two themes: first, how do you deal with a power that can massively change the universe when that power has its own mind and interests and is almost like a child, and second, when one has power, how can one stay on the sidelines and watch when others are suffering....or are being subject to genocide?  This second theme, guided by the book's pretty strong cast of characters, works really well and takes the plot in an interesting direction , although how it's intertwined with the first isn't nearly as successful.  Still, Spangler's prose made it impossible for me to put this down, and I am really excited to see where this goes from here.  

*NOTE:  You do NOT need to read Stoneskin before reading this novel - in fact, I'd argue you're better off starting with this novel if you haven't already read Stoneskin for reasons I'll explain after the jump.  


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Humans have spread throughout the Milky Way over the last few thousand years.  That expansion would not have been possible without The Deep, a sentient alien energy force that chooses its partners and then, at their direction, will transport instantly things and people across seemingly impossible distances in a blink - far faster than any engine or FTL drive could hope to achieve.  The partners chosen by the Deep are known as Witches, who gain immortality as a result of the choice, in addition to their powers to build the galaxy's supply lines.  But The Deep is more than just a tool, it's a being of its own, one with a sense of humor like a child or a dog, and a lack of understanding sometimes of human affairs despite its utterly massive power.  

Tembi Stoneskin was the youngest ever to be chosen by the Deep to be a Witch, chosen as a little girl from the slums.  For Tembi, the Deep is a friend, and she knows that the power it offers her should be used for good.  So in a galaxy suddenly filled with war, with a genocidal army known as the Blackwings on one side clearly growing in influence, Tembi uses the Deep to try and save lives, through the defusing of bombs in civilian areas.  But Tembi knows there's a lot more good that can be done for those suffering from war and genocide....if only the witch leadership at Lancaster would allow it.

But when Tembi is taken by the Deep to see a mysterious explosion of a moon, seemingly by a brand new weapon, she finds herself plunged into the war in ways she never could have expected.  And what she will find will change how she views the galaxy, and the Deep itself, forever......
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The Blackwing War tells the story of Tembi, a young adult with an incredibly kind soul who wants to help others but also respects the Deep as a friend, and knows that the Deep can't simply be used as a tool to fight in war.  Readers who have already read Stoneskin will be familiar with Tembi, whose growing up was the story of that novel.  That said, this novel doesn't quite follow Stoneskin seamlessly - a plot decision Tembi makes at the end of that novel doesn't seem to happen here till a short bit into this novel, and a secondary antagonist from that novel, the Witches' leader Domino, suddenly has telepathy she didn't manifest in that book.  In fact, certain plot twists in this book will feel super obvious and predictable for readers of Stoneskin, to the point where I almost think you'd be better off not reading that one first if you haven't already.  Not that the plot twists here are very unpredictable even without foreknowledge.  

Still, even with the plot being predictable at times, The Blackwing War shines with both its main character and its main theme of the use of power in times of war and atrocities.  Tembi is an incredibly lovable main character - a young woman who is clearly still growing and learning new things, who wants desperately to do good - a little afraid of being manipulated and of being out of her depth, but still determined to help if she can.  She's also intensely committed to her strongest held views, such as the Deep's status as a person, and hard-headed at times, but it's all so earnest that you can't help but love her.  Add in the fact that her bio-engineered skin, which turns hard as rock when stressed, makes it hard for her to feel physically close to others at times, you can empathize with her when she manages to get small moments of comfort with other people (in an interesting twist, that happens twice in this book, and neither is with her seemingly long-term love interest from Stoneskin).    

And Tembi is thrown into a situation that is terrible and familiar to today's world: a galaxy where an army is persecuting and hunting down others for their differences - in this case, for being bioengineered like Tembi's people - and committing genocide on a large scale, all the while denying it in the sphere of public opinion...and even worse, showing more and more signs of growing in popularity.  The Deep is not some magic force that can be used for killing, it's a power for transportation....and a being that doesn't like to hurt others, as Tembi knows, so it's not like the Witches can simply snap their fingers and destroy one of the sides in a war.  But Tembi knows that she can't simply do nothing especially as more and more of the atrocities are revealed, and Tembi meets more of the people suffering, the more she feels the need to disobey her superiors and to intervene, despite the fact that such an action could jeopardize the Witches' own power and self-autonomy.  

The result is a plot that is hard to put down (and the secondary characters other than Tembi are really good) as chapter after chapter ends in a way to convince the reader they want to find out what happens next - Spangler's prose in particular really works for me.  Certain plot developments are not going to surprise anyone again, with one late book plot twist seemingly fairly obvious, but how it plays out in the end is utterly horrifying, and made even more so by the hope that seems to come after it.  The weakest part of the book honestly is its cliffhanger ending, which deals with its secondary theme of dealing with a power source that is basically a child in maturity, and honestly isn't as interesting as the war and power and oppression themes.  

But overall, The Blackwing War is a strong first entry in this series, a satisfying story in its own right, and one I can't wait to see continued.  

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