‘Blackwing’ – Ed McDonald (Gollancz)

If there’s one reading habit of mine that I’ve finally come to terms with, it’s that I will always be the last one to the party. I will be so late, in fact, that the party has long since finished and become the subject of legend; the party you really missed out on if you weren’t there right at the start. If you’re me, reading can be a lonely business… ;o)

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to ‘Blackwing’, a book that had loads of great things said about it back in 2018 (upon its release). Where was I at the time…? Not important *, what’s important is that I finally grabbed a copy of ‘Blackwing’, the other way, and found the time to read it. And it was bloody brilliant, I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it. But you knew how good it was already, didn’t you? Let me tell you about it anyway… ;o)

‘Only three kinds of people willingly enter the Misery: the desperate, the stupid and the greedy…’

The Misery is a wasteland: a dangerous, corrupted frontier between the Rtepublic and the Deep Kings. When traitors, thieves and spies try to flee they run for The Misery and often as not it’s Captain Ryhalt Galharrow’s job to bring them to heel beneath the fractured skies – provided they haven’t already fallen prey to the twisted creatures that inhabit the shifting, polluted sands. It’s a deadly place, even for a man of Galharrow’s experience.

But it’s a necessary place, because the Republic’s only other defence against the Deep Kings is Nall’s Engine, a weapon of incomparable power that protects the wasteland’s border. And that final defence may just have failed…

‘Blackwing’ is pretty much the perfect mix of war story, doomed romance, detective noir and a little bit of horror too, all wrapped up with a grimdark bow. And it flits between all these sub-genres effortlessly, there’s no chance of the book being stuck in a rut simply because there is so much that it wants to be; it may look like it the plot has its hands full but McDonald mixes all the ingredients together superbly so that the plot flows smoothly and I was swept up with it. You’ve got your epic, panoramic shots of war in The Misery and then the action focuses on the mean streets of Valengrad where there are mysteries to be solved. I loved the way that it all combined into such an utterly compelling tale, especially when you see it all come together in the end.

McDonald grounds all of this in two things, our ‘hero’ Ryhalt Galharrow and forbidding landscape of The Misery itself. The tortured landscape of The Misery is just horrifying anyway and McDonald loves to play with this; having it gradually flow over into Valengrad itself with the arrival of the Darlings (terrifying in what they can do) and the Gillings (strangely sympathetic, until you see what they can do). The Misery is one of those places where you can’t help but feel a little relieved that you have the page as shield against its more insidious affects.

And then you have Galharrow, holding it all together even though he may not completely understand what is happening. . He’s an intriguing mix of hardbitten warrior/private eye who may wear the ‘bastard trope’ a little too proudly but just wait for those moments when McDonald lets us see just why that is… You got to admire the way that Galharrow just keeps rolling with the punches and getting back up to do it all over again, just because he wants to do the right thing and somehow make up for who he believes he is. There’s a lot more to his tale and I will be there for it.

If the next two books in the series are on the same level as ‘Blackwing’, then I think we’re looking at a series of some note here. I’ll be into those just as soon as I get paid, I definitely won’t leave it as long this time.

* 2018… I suspect I was catching up with whatever was great back in 2010, don’t judge me ;o)