Once every few hundred books or so, you find a book you love to recommend because you absolutely hated it. Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis fits that bill. When I read the back blurb, I found myself expecting a cross between Carrie Vaughn’s After the Golden Age and the new Captain America movie. Nazi supermen against English warlocks sounds like the sort of smack down we discussed over the cafeteria table in college. But this book lacked the light hearted tone and uplifting principles of both those stories and instead it draws the reader ever more steadily into a tale of sweat, blood, evil, and death.
So why would I recommend this book?
First, I would not recommend it everyone. Certainly only to adults and even then, only to adults would read fantasy regularly. Despite the setting there is little in the book to speak to readers who prefer history or even alternate histories. Secondly, it is extraordinarily well written. All the characters are beautifully crafted, including the supporting ones, so that the reader has a clear picture not only of such superficial things as appearance, but expressions and mannerisms. The plot is stunningly intricate but there is never a moment the story stumbles and draws attention to this. In fact, it moves forward swiftly and clearly letting the reader become immersed in this alternate world and only at the end is the full design laid out for the reader to gape at and try to comprehend.
And thirdly, the main reason I would recommend this book is that it slaps a dark reality into fantasy that is rarely there. I don’t know if Mr. Tregillis is religious, but there are strong religious elements in the descent into darkness he portrays and the questions he then raises into the light. This book is all about power. And there are no on- liners from the heroes about how great power brings great responsibility, or from the villains about how there is only power and those too weak to use it. Instead there are humans desperately trying to combat the greatest evil they’ve every known…only to find they are pitting evil against evil and that the very country and people they are trying to save is the cost of victory. Mr. Tregillis follows the British warlocks’ fall masterfully. The reader experiences each choice, each nudging of the line between right and wrong, light and dark. Phrases we accept without question, necessary evil, acceptable lost, are placed beneath a harsh light with all their flaws exposed. And somewhere along the story you realize there is no clean answer. The right and wrong aren’t black and white. The first bargain struck with the devil might save you for that day, but in the end, it is the first bargain that destroys all you love.
Is the chance to save your country worth a few drops of blood? Absolutely.
Is the chance to save thousands of people worth the taking of one life? Conceivably.
Is the chance to destroy the mightiest army of darkness worth the soul of a child?
Once you start making those kinds of decisions, how do you stop?