Black Hawks by David Wragg (Articles of Faith # 1)

Black Hawks by David Wragg caught my attention last month as this impressive debut seemed to have drawn the impossible comparisons to two of the genre's greatest, Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch. And then that gorgeous gorgeous artwork on the cover resembled the cover of one of the most buzzy ( and rightly so!) debuts in the previous couple of years - Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. Tall order to live up, sure but hey - you got my eyeballs!



Finally got down to it over the last one week - when rains in Langkawi and airport transits gave me ample time on my week off to gobble this one up. And say this for David Wragg - this guy's writing chops are absolutely A-class and he writes a fine debut to give us an impressive epic fantasy about a band of scrappy mercenaries getting caught in a twisted game of power in a kingdom reeling in the middle of civil unrest and faith gone ugly. In a year of spectacular books, this one's going to be standout and hells, that says a lot about a debut.

So Black Hawks is a low epic fantasy that promises us a lot of fun, violence and humour in the company of a mercenary bunch of battle-scarred veterans scrapping with each other and jostling with life and death as they try and keep alive. The story unspools from the single POV of young Chel Vedren, a young man forced into knight-duty for his step-uncle, a minor Duke. But knighthood in the beginning seems like a dreary job leaving little scope for glory. Until the day when the coastal city where he is stationed, is attacked by barbaric forces from the North ( unimaginatively called Norts!) and he is thrust into the unlikely position of protecting the younger prince of the Kingdom Tarfel (A charming young man whose vocabulary in the beginning is limited to frightened whimpers and empty declarations of his royal lineage) and whisk him away to safety. He is taken into protective custody by this rough and tumble gang of no-gooders' who appear out of nowhere as the whole besieged city is burning and thus, begins young Chel's education in the ways of the wild, picking up important lessons in life and also, discovering who he really could be.

The best feature about this book is the fun factor. There's this wide silver lining of humour spread through the book, underlining the unflinching violence that marks the lives of these Mercs. I was laughing out loud at many instances and this lightens up the mood of this otherwise dark book. There's only very little world building so to speak - A standard medieval ages kingdom on the brink of civil unrest, power hungry tyrants who control the reins in the name of 'faith', no magic at all and a few ethnicities that represent the minority and thus, are the 'outsiders'. But what is there, is a relentless focus on the explosive plot surging ahead with little twists and unexpected turns, marred by exciting action and backstabbing galore.

The characters are well fleshed out and memorable. The group dynamics, the relentless banter and quips and the brotherhood-formed-on-the-battlefield shines throughout the book. In the quieter moments when we take a gasping, breath in between the interminable action scenes, we get to know the Black Hawks better. There is Rennic, the boss-man of the hard-nosed bloody minded company whose gruff demeanour and tough stance are a result of a life-long struggle on staying alive and single-minded focus on getting the bloody job done and getting paid for it. He's a man whose soul is like a twisted barbed line on which hangs countless guilty acts of having gone back on his 'promise' in order to survive. A true mercenary in that.
I totally loved Lemon - with her fiery orange hair and incessant cussing, she's a lass with a heart of gold and more education than the rest of the company put together. She's a total hoot with her choicest imaginative epithets. Then there's Loveless, an artist with her blade whose backstory is probably the most thought-out. Foss is a gentle giant whose good humour and manners belies his fearsome strength. Whisper and Spider make the rest of the band - each deadly in their own arts, shooting an arrow or fighting dirty. Spider especially is one of the greyest characters in the lot, shifty and creepy throughout the book and as a reader, I couldn't really make out as to where his loyalties lay. I really hope to see more of this guy!

But the best of all is of course, young Chel himself. Who is quite ordinary and who cannot even hold a sword up or use a skinning knife to save his own life. And yet, whose relentless dogged determination to carry on through with his sworn duty puts a shine on the boy. His heart is pure gold and he wouldn't back down from his duty to protect the prince. But what he is blessed with, is good luck and he carries on through with it right upto the end. Dislocated shoulder, broken ribs, purple bruised throat, all of this be damned. He truly won me over as a character to root for - no special powers, an observer to the bloodshed around him, the voice of the mercenary company as they get entangled into the power games of the tyrants and Lords in the kingdom, teetering on the edge of a collapse.

Black Hawks doesn't do anything by a stretch to push the boundaries of the genre sure, but it is such a fun impossible to put down read that grabs your attention from get-go, pushes the pedal to the floor and races to an astounding climax, leaving you on an infuriating cliffhanger. An extraordinary debut that deserves all the love it's garnered and continues to, I cannot wait for the next part of the Articles of Faith. 

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