‘The Black Hawks’ – David Wragg (Harper Voyager)

The Fellowship of the Ring, the Black Company, the Raven and the Bridge Burners. In fact any group of characters that band together for whatever reason, in a fantasy novel, make that book one that I will read no matter what; not so much for the battles and derring do (although that never hurts) but for those moments round the campfire, at the end of the day, where conversations happen and friendships are forged. If they’re doing it for money then so much the better as it opens the story with so many possibilities for our brave heroes (or, in some cases, ‘heroes’). All of this is a roundabout way of saying that as soon as I read the blurb for ‘the Black Hawks’ I just knew that I would have to pick up a copy and try it for myself.

So I picked up a copy and tried it for myself. ‘the Black Hawks’ took some getting into but not too much; it’s well worth that initial effort though, half of me is wishing that I hadn’t torn through the last few pages as now I’ve got to wait for the sequel…

Life as a knight is not what Vedren Chel imagined. Bound by oath to a dead-end job in the service of a lazy step-uncle, Chel no longer dreams of glory – he dreams of going home.

When invaders throw the kingdom into turmoil, Chel finds opportunity in the chaos: if he escorts a stranded prince to safety, Chel will be released from his oath.

All he has to do is drag the brat from one side of the country to the other, through war and wilderness, chased all the way by ruthless assassins.

With killers on your trail, you need killers watching your back. You need the Black Hawk Company – mercenaries, fighters without equal, a squabbling, scrapping pack of rogues.

Prepare to join the Black Hawks.

‘The Black Hawks’ is one of those books where I really wish that it had come with a map, at least to start with. Wragg has a lot to unpack in those first few chapters with plenty of cities containing interestingly named factions, all in their own areas of land, all laid out on the page for the reader to contend with. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of ambitious world building (which this most definitely is) but there’s a little part of me that can’t quite make out where it all sits in relation to other bits. I need it all to sit within a well defined coast line so I can get a feel for what is what as well as a sense of just how epic the journeys made by the Black Hawks are.

A tough one to call then, maybe Wragg could have been a little bit clearer in his worldbuilding, maybe the publisher could have insisted on a map; maybe, just maybe I should stop having music on in the background while I’m reading… Whatever the cause, the first few chapters are a little heavy going but stick with it though, once Wragg lets the leash slip, ‘The Black Hawks’ just flies.

All of a sudden, everything is happening on the run and the plot suddenly has an urgency that wasn’t there before; an urgency to the plot that also comes out in the pacing, a combination that effortlessly hooked this reader and had me scanning ahead just to make sure that favourite characters (by which I mean Lemon of course) come out on top. They usually do (at least until a vicious twist right at the end of the book) but the air of predictability you’d expect this approach to bring just isn’t there. There’s a real sense that anything could happen and even if our heroes make it through a scrap, you’re still left gasping at just how close to death everyone was. The fight scenes are just amazing.

While I’m thinking of it, I need to mention that ‘The Black Hawks’ is also something that I really appreciate, it’s a travelogue that doesn’t just take its readers to places just so they can be crossed off the list of cool places that the author has made up. I can’t stand books like that (*cough*Temeraire*cough) so it’s really refreshing to read a book where places are visited for good reasons involving plot. Sorry, had to get that one off my chest.

What ‘The Black Hawks’ is though, at heart, is a book about fellowship, the sort of fellowship that you only find when you’re a hardbitten mercenary forced to rely on the abilities of other hardbitten mercenaries to keep you alive. I liked the way that as Chel’s understanding of the Black Hawks grows, so does what we see of the group. It’s a family, a family of excessive swearing and awesome skills with anything sharp but a family nonetheless. Given the events that conclude this book, I’m very much looking forward to seeing how that family reacts. Watching Chel’s whole outlook on the world change is a bit of a joy as well, he certainly doesn’t end the book in the same state that he starts out.

‘The Black Hawks’ was a real joy to read and I’m all a quiver waiting to see how it ends. If the sequel hits the same heights then I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Black Hawks will become a mercenary company to keep an eye on.