Thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable read that finished the trilogy off

This is the final part of The Vagrant trilogy. Though I'd guess there could be more books set in that world, it's clearly not going to happen soon.

And it's a good ending, rounding off the story that saw a mute, would-be knight carry a famed sword out of Infernal-infested territory, protecting a young girl and a goat - and then followed her back to confront the Infernals, heal the Breach and save the world.

All that was ten years ago. Yet the land is still broken - and the remainder of the Seven, who should have defended the world from the demons, still sleep, sulking perhaps that they failed to play their part. Now that young girl - Vesper - is grown and she's fed up waiting for them to bring aid to the scattered communities, suffering from infernal Taint but more from the damage done in the wars.

And the Seven arise...

This was, I think, actually my favourite of the three books. A deeply human story, it brings out themes present but not explored in the previous volumes. The Seven are truly powerful and when They rise, all tremble. Yet They did not defeat the Infernals, They left that to Vesper, wielding Gamma's pillaged sword. Now, we learn something of Their history and creation, returning to the woman Massassi who made Them and built the Empire of the Winged Eye to stand against the Infernals. We see how that intention was corrupted, and how the Seven turned from the outside world.

We also see - and I think this is unusual in fantasy - what happens after the Great Victory. It's a scarred, battered world, uneasy, full of friction. Compromise is needed. Forgiveness. Mercy.

Yet now They arise, intending to purge the infernal taint from the world. While Vesper sees the value of mercy and compromise, the Seven want only an icy purity. And now they're safe from real harm, they can pursue it. When Vesper stands against Them, she is labelled a traitor.

As ever in these books, complexity is piled on moral complexity. Vesper wants peace and compromise: to achieve them she must harm the Empire that gave her purpose and shelter. Her allies - the Infernals from whom her father previously rescued Gamma's sword.

The Man Shape.

The First.

The Backwards Child.

Nightmares from the darkness of the pit, all of them, yet now wanting to build lives alongside the tainted humans, all of whom would be wiped out by the Empire.

It's a taut, beautifully told story.

Again the Vagrant sets forth.

Again, he's accompanied by a child - perhaps by two, there is the girl Reela, Vesper's daughter, and the sulky Jem, her lover. Jem is perhaps a bit of a manchild. I didn't take to him at first. he wasn't wholeheartedly for adventure. he told lies - and little lies at that! Not a hero, not even a villain. What was he doing in the book? Then, I think, I saw what he was: not a great warrior or leader like Vesper, just an ordinary man caught up in unimaginable horror. No, he's not likeable - he's definitely not good enough for Vesper - but he's a witness, standing alongside great events and showing their scale by his smallness.

And again, there is conflict and loss, dear friends killed, betrayal and a hopeless fight - all the more for the Empire, that ultimate refuge, now being the enemy.

(And yes, there are goats in this book. Perhaps less central than before, but as enduring, as obdurate. The goats, too, give events here a scale. May there always be goats.)

I may be biased - see for yourself the nice message that Pete wrote in my copy of the book at the launch! - but for me this is a fitting completion to one of the most original fantasy trilogies of recent years, and it's a satisfying conclusion, a peace being hard won through suffering but much, clearly, still to be done to deliver harmony in Vesper's world.

I received a free EArc from Netgalley.

But that said, after only a few pages, I decided to read the previous book in the series, as the world I discovered was both intriguing and quite alien. I thought I needed some back story, and indeed I did. My review for The Malice is here.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2011536175?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

I should also perhaps have taken the time to read The Vagrant but impatience won out, and anyway, The Vagrant, unlike in The Malice, is a real part of this final part of the trilogy (I am assuming it's the final part).

Anyway, back to The Seven.

The world created by Peter Newman throughout The Vagrant series is inherently alien. It feels new and strange and, on occasion, very, very weird. This, more than anything, immediately draws the reader in, for Newman's descriptions are sparse in the extreme, and I was often left decrying his lack of description (which is weird for me because I often skip excess descriptions in books content to let my imagination hold sway). Neither is it just his descriptions that are sparse, the whole nature of the book is trimmed down so that you really have to read each and every word - there's no skipping a bit because you sort of know what's about to happen. There is also, in the grand scheme of things, little conversation. This ties with the 'pared' down nature of the planet that these people inhabit.

The characters in this final book - Vesper, Samael and Scout, The Vagrant, Jem, her daughter, Obeisance and The Seven, as well as The First, Neer and other characters from the earlier book (including The Buck although not as much as I might have liked) - are all scarcely sketched and yet all have very distinct characters. There is no need to'like' any of the characters (not like in some books) and yet throughout the series you gain respect for them all - even when they might be being cowardly or acting contrary to what we might hope they do. This is a strength of the book - for all the weirdness and strangeness - these are people (I use that word lightly) that we can understand if not relate to.

I very much enjoyed the 'backstory' in The Seven. Throughout The Malice I found it a little distracting, but in The Seven, the back story is vitally important, and indeed, at the end, I would have liked to know more about Massala and her creations.

Book 3 is eminently more readable than The Malice - and I don't think it was because I knew more about the 'world' of The Vagrant - I think the storyline is more recognizable and therefore flows better. Yet I don't think the author ever quite gives the reader what they want - there is not really a happily ever after, there is just an ending, and one which is never wholly assured until it actually happens.

There are very good battle scenes, and very good 'political' scenes and yet through it all, the world of The Vagrant remains aloof - difficult to grasp onto. It is not a typical fantasy book and some might well struggle with it, but I think it's well worth the struggle (The Malice took me a month to read because I struggled with elements of it - The Seven is a much quicker read) and it is refreshing to read something so very different and 'new'.

I will also post my review on Amazon.co.uk/.com and on my Wordpress site

The Seven is the third in Peter Newman’s “Vagrant” series. I thought the first, “The Vagrant” was a great story, told in an interesting way, and the second was a great piece of fantasy in its own right. That meant that The Seven had some pretty big narrative boots to fill, as it moved the series toward its conclusion.

Set years after the end of the previous book, the world of The Seven is equal parts familiar and strange. In the north, the sclerotic empire of the Winged Eye is now resting under the somewhat benevolent hand of Vesper. An idealist, with a penchant for trusting people and making unlikely friends, Vesper is determined to shake things up in the Empire of the Eye. As the Empire is learning to live with the disintegration of its greatest threat, the Breach which spewed otherworldly influences into the more familiar realm, it’s in something of a state of flux. Vesper closed the breach. Vesper has the sword of one of the Seven, the divine leaders of the Empire, most of whom haven’t been seen for years. Newman shows us an Empire terrified of change, one which has been in stasis alongside its leaders, perhaps for too long – and now has no idea how to cope with change. The rituals and habits that have pushed society through millennia are taking a long time to change. Still, Vesper is making a go of it, using her assumed authority. It’s interesting to see the institutions of the Empire slowly drifting apart at the seams, as it copes with no longer having an external threat to define itself against.

At the same time, there’s still the issue of the Infernals, those otherworldy essences which arrived in the world before the closure of the Breach. They, and the half-breeds, a fusion of humanity and Infernal essence, are having to redefine themselves as well. Without the Breach as a constant source of reinforcements, they’re having to consider a longer term perspective. The half –breeds have formed communities, and they’re learning to live in the twisted version of land that’s available in the south, over the sea from the Empire of the Eye. This is no longer a world of eternal war, of expansion, defeat and conquest – but a world that exists afterwards, where the survivors have to learn how to live with each other. As one might expect after years of conflict, this is…rather difficult. As with the Eye, the fragmented domains of the Infernals are under pressure to change, to adapt to their new situation. As with the Empire, there’s always the danger that they’ll self-immolate whilst doing so.

All parts of this world are beautifully detailed and inventively realised – the straight-backed legions of the eye, led by knights with singing swords are a stark contrast to the Infernals that can inhabit multiple bodies, or graft extra limbs to themselves, or the half-breeds whose brush with Infernals has left them fearsome giants. You can believe in the Eye, its searching, wavering gaze, and in the demons, with their energy and desire to exist, and the half-breeds and their plans to build better lives. They’re all internally consistent, cohesive, and rich with meaning.

As the world teeters on the brink between the hope of change and the old certainty of war, none of them are quite prepared for the Seven.

The characters – well, there’s a great many old favourites here, but the stars of the show are, I think, Vesper and the Vagrant, along with Vesper’s daughter, Reela. Vesper is a little taller now than she was in The Malice, a leader struggling to work out how to draw people together, to get them to build something new, and put down old grudges. She’s given her own weaknesses – a need, in particular, to do everything she can, a refusal to make time for her own emotional connections in the sea of larger things. As ever, the consequences of these flaws are explored alongside the benefits that they bring; even as Vesper is building a newer, happier world, her own relationships have a sense of fragility about them, the energy that would sustain them pushed out into the world. Watching Vesper, whom we last saw as a child, struggling to speak with her own young daughter, is heartbreaking. She’s away for too long, and disconnected from her own life to the extent that her daughter is, if not afraid of her, then hurt by her, suffering the consequences of her absence.

Into that void steps The Vagrant, a father to Vesper and a figure to emulate for Reela (which causes some complex conflicts within the heart of her own father). The Vagrant is older than we may remember, but willing to put on armour and help his daughter change the world. Still silent, and like Vesper, still stubbornly unwilling to accept injustice, he moves through the narrative like a tide of obsidian – obdurate and unstoppable, with a sharp edge. Father and daughter together are a delight – their emotional connection obvious and their conflicts believable and human.

Reela is the third of this tripod, and clearly idolises The Vagrant. Her feelings for Vesper are more complex; you can sense the anger at abandonment there in the prose, along with the yearning for acceptance and love that sits alongside it. This is a story about family, amongst other things, and this one – The Vagrant, Vesper and Reela – is under strain. That said, it’s also still clearly a family – occasionally fraught and argumentative, but tied together by bonds of affection nonetheless.
Other returning favourites include Samael – a man who became part of an Infernal knight, now struggling to determine who exactly he is, and what he’d like to be. Samael’s discussions with Vesper verge on the philosophical, and his stoic search for a sense of self is deeply compelling reading. In this search he’s matched by the mysterious First, an Infernal that holds its essence across multiple bodies, a distributed consciousness, which struggles to understand humanity and the world in which it exists. Their separate journeys toward understanding are fascinating.

Perhaps the characters who loom largest are the titular Seven, and their creator. We get some understanding of the drivers behind the creation of the Seven within flashbacks, watching a woman determined to save the world ruthlessly take the steps she feels are required to do so. The Seven are visible in both timelines – as the end product of the past, the long term wardens of the Empire of the Eye. In the present, they’re somewhat more complex. If the world is not to their liking, they have the capacity to unmake it, and hold in their hands an Empire which regards them as divinities. They’re mythical figures, as the book begins. Each becomes distinguishable from the others though, the stories of their pasts being revealed, and the decisions they make in the face of the present setting them apart from each other. The Seven are the ultimate authority for the older vision of the world, stepping into the new society which Vesper is struggling to construct. Seeing them as individuals, they seem complicated, driven, forbidding - and at least as strange as the Infernals they were meant to oppose.

The main strand of the narrative is centred around Vesper’s efforts to create a new world in the aftermath of the old – but there’s a lot going on there. There’s some politics, as disparate factions are dragged together. There’s the social changes going on in the Empire and in the south. There’s some absolutely storming battle scenes, kinetically, gracefully, bloodily and uncompromisingly written. There’s scenes of love and affection to warm the heart, and some betrayals which threaten to break it. This is a story of a world being brought together, and of different visions for the way that world will rebuild. It’s complicated, captivating stuff – but Newman’s liquid prose makes it a great read.

Also, and I feel I have to mention this – there’s a goat. Several goats, in fact.

If you’re new to Newman’s world, I’d suggest picking up The Vagrant and working forward from there. If, on the other hand, you were left on tenterhooks after The Malice, if you wanted to know what happened next, if you’ve wondered about The Seven, and the fates of Vesper, the Vagrant and their goats – then you owe it to yourself to pick up this absolutely excellent conclusion to the series.

It's been years since Vesper sealed the breach. Vesper now has a vision of peace where Demons wearing human skins, the Tainted and Humans live in harmony. The only trouble is, The Seven have awakened and they have other ideas.
The third book in the Vagrant series. A fabulous and original fantasy/sci-fi adventure, I had a lump in my throat at the ending. It's a hard one to describe so just read it, you'll not be sorry you did.