Book Discussion: The Tower of Silence
*** SPOILERS LIE WITHIN ***
The Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series is Larry Corriea’s most mature work as an author. I’m not saying it’s as good as the Lord of the Rings but it is lightyears better than George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. I honestly feel that this series will still be read long after his Monster Hunter International books start gathering dust in public libraries.
FIGHT ME!!!
If you are not familiar with the series, it’s primarily the saga of one Ashok Vadal.
Yes, that is a Hindustani name. One of the nice things about being a right wing author is that you can borrow from another culture without having to flash your anti-privilege card. Corriea needed it because of his basic premise. His setup required a rigid caste system.
The series started as an inversion of the secret king trope. Once upon a time, there was a Great Warrior who defeated a world-destroying evil and became a king. It was prophesied that one-day evil would return but that a descendant of that first king would again destroy it. When the evil returned the last descendant of that first hero rises to destroy it once and for all.
Okay, that is straightforward enough but Corriea being an accountant thought that was a serious irregularity with this story. If everyone knew the prophecy, why did they let the Great Warrior’s sacred bloodline get so thin? Let’s face facts, after his final victory you are sending that guy to the stud farm. Three hundred wives absolute minimum. Same deal for his sons and their sons.
However, this creates a problem where the elite caste ludicrously outnumbers lower castes. It’s a caste that becomes an unsupportable burden for the rest of the lower castes, and they eventually opt for the Tarquin solution. However, getting rid of the entire caste is a pretty bad idea what with the whole Chtuluoid world-ending threat hanging over everyone’s head, so you keep them around but in much-diminished status.
In the world of Lok, the former royal caste became the Untouchables. And royal rule was replaced with the Law. This world has for centuries been a rigid caste society and governed by a non-democratic republic, (in function it’s really an oligarchy). The judges make the Law. The chief enforcers of the Law are the Protectors, an order with superpowers granted by a great magic called the Heart of the Mountain.
However, there is magic that is far greater. The black swords. These are rare and becoming rarer as each one breaks.
Ashok Vidal is both a Protector, a member of the highest caste, and the bearer of the Black Sword Angruvadal. Ashok is a legend on Lok for his utter ruthlessness in enforcing the law. His slaughters are numberless and his mercy is non-existent. Then after twenty years of service, he falls. It’s revealed that he was born an Untouchable. When he was a boy Angruvadal had killed a man who was unworthy to wield it. He had been assigned to scrub away the blood and had moved the Black Sword to get at a difficult spot. And it claimed him for its own. The Vidal family was locked in a disastrous dilemma. If word got out the clan would be disgraced, but if they killed the Casteless boy the sword would destroy itself and a clan that lost its ancestor blade always fell. But where there is a wizard there is a way, the Vadel’s tame sorcerer does some serious reprogramming in young Ashok. His mind was wiped and he became the perfect and utterly fearless servant of the Law, a Protector’s Protector. When Ashok was obligated to the Protector’s order his “family” was hoping a ferocious but fearless Protector of the Law’s career would be fatally short. Instead, he became a legend.
And then the legend broke. His base birth was revealed and Ashok was stripped of all office, status and well everything except his Black Sword. The swords had to be preserved at all costs because they were the best defense against the demons from the oceans. They were the reason the Great Warrior came to Lok in the first place.
Nobody can figure out what to do with him except the head of the anti-religious police (all religion is banned on Lok). He orders Ashok to join a rebellion that is brewing. He obeys however grudgingly and joins with the Voice, Thera, and the Priest Keta. Ashok is now the General.
All that stuff is from the first book. We are now four books into what Corriea promises to be a five-book series. The last book was kind of the middle (AKA the muddle) of the story. Stuff happened toward the end but most of the narrative was all of the protagonists taking stock of their situation. As I had said in that book discussion the narrative doesn’t really move forward a lot of stuff did happen but at the end of the day it was just giving some space for the main characters to develop. It succeeded at that.
However, a LOT of stuff does happen in this newest book.
***SPOILER ALERT***
I’ll try to keep the spoilers light. But there will be some from here on out.
All of Corriea’s protagonists share certain traits. They are physically, imposing, rough boys who deal and take a lot of damage and they are smarter than most people would guess. None of them are handy with the ladies.
That is where the resemblance ends. You would never mistake Owen Pitt for Jake Sullivan and you could never swap out either for Ashok. Vadal is the most subtly layered character that Corriea has ever constructed. Unstoppable and relentless, his atrocities have been speakable yet he is not a psychopath, he can feel for those he slaughters. Given his brainwashing, he should be immune to change and yet he has evolved. He starts as an extreme militant atheist and while he is not yet a believer he has accepted the gods as being real but he is not a worshipper and in this book, it’s revealed that he is right not to be.
The last book ended with Ashok stranded on the Island of Fortress, the last impenetrable bastion of religion on Lok’s world. Most of this book is his literal journey to get back to Lok. While is not at all neglected, his absence gives the story a chance to let all of the supporting characters come into their own. On this journey, Ashok is faced with his greatest challenge yet. It turns out that his broken sword Angruvadal has an enemy it wants killed.
After the assassination of the chief judge by an untouchable, Inquisitor Ormand’s genocide of the former royal clan has now been implemented. All of the casteless are to be exterminated. In this volume, we find out why. Ormand made a deal with a literal devil thirty years ago, kill all of the casteless and a captured demon will reveal the location of godlike power to Ormand.
In Ashok’s absence, Thera now has to become much more to the Sons of the Blacksword than just the Voice of the Forgotten. The former member of the Warrior caste has begun leading her own army in the field.
The various Sons whose job was to mostly stay alive while Ashok killed everyone, now have to step up and fight the genocide by themselves against completely unwinnable odds.
Jagdish, the warrior has risen from what should have been a canon fodder redshirt guy to being a key character in his own right. He now has risen high but has to accept the burdens that come with it. He has received a dishonorable order from the capital to wipe out the defenseless casteless. His warriors loathe the idea and he is trying to find a way out of it. Jagdish has become my second favorite character after Ashok.
The most intriguing character has surprisingly turned out to be one of the most evil in the book; Javed, the Witchfinder. A literal psychopath, assassin, and spy. His deep cover assignment with the rebels has fundamentally shaken him. He has never hesitated to commit any heinous act in the pursuit of his mission but acting as a priest to the Thera’s people has created an identification issue for him. In the real world, anyone who has been in deep cover for an extremely prolonged period suffers from the same issue. In this book, Javed witnesses something that shatters his worldview.
By the end of the book all of the remaining characters, and events are rapidly escalating to a climax.
If you keyed on the words “remaining characters,” yeah there are some tears that are going to be shed here.
I will go out on a limb here and state that Tower of Silence is now Larry Corriea’s all-time best novel, displacing Alpha and Nemesis. The ambition and scope of this series have been incredible but this particular book is one of the few “pick it up at four in the afternoon and find out you’ve finished it long after midnight” books I’ve ever read. It kept me glued. This is the first time that the author has created an extensive world from whole cloth. He’s built a huge foundation for this world. Everything from the lives of the various castes to a banking system has been constructed. Even the profanity (Which Correia has famously never shied away from before) is appropriate to this world.
This series is a vast sweeping epic and it is incredibly brutal, the comparisons to Robert Howard are entirely justified. Lok is a savage heartless land but unlike Westeros, the heroes of this saga (even Devedas) are fighting for a hope of something better.
The Dark Herald Recommends with Enthusiasm (5/5)
