Book Review: TOWER OF SILENCE by Larry Correia

Book 4 of the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior

There’s an old parable that writers use to create an engaging story, using a protagonist and a tree as the central elements: at the beginning of your story, you have (let’s say) a boy and a tree. Before you get too far into the book, the boy should climb the tree. By the second act he’s stuck in the tree, and you start to throw rocks at him. By the start of the third act, you’re lighting the tree on fire.

Between rocks and fire, you’ve applied escalating degrees of pressure and discomfort to the boy. Aside from this behavior outing you as a total psychopath, it forces the boy to do whatever he can to mitigate what you’re throwing at him. Thus a character and a story are born. Now all we have to figure out is the ending, which will determine what the genre is.

In TOWER OF SILENCE, the fourth installment of Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, the tree catches fire, and we’re in for a bumpy ride…

The Story

For a recap of the previous three books, check back on Upstream for a forthcoming writeup. As for book four, be aware that spoilers may lie ahead.

In the closing chapters of DESTROYER OF WORLDS, Ashok and Devedas finally had their long-awaited showdown. It was brutal and epic. Offense was taken. Offense was given. By the end of it both men were beaten to a pulp and it looked like Ashok was dead, until he somehow washed up on the distant shores of the Isle of Fortress.

The closing line to book three was epic, he meets a stranger who more or less says “You should be dead” and he replies “I’m starting to think I’m not allowed.” Throughout the whole series Ashok has struggled to accept that he’s an instrument of gods that he doesn’t believe in, and after those gods keep hitting the reset button on his life, it’s starting to get through.

So where does it go from here? Well, a significant portion of the book is dedicated to what the Sons of the Black Sword do when their champion is missing and presumed dead. Like any movement built on zeal and grit, they keep up the cause, only now they look to the prophet Thera to lead them against the ruling caste. Without getting into the minutiae of their operations and all that, I really liked this element of the story. Ashok is definitely a founding figure to the Sons, a mascot and a powerful leader, but when they carry on without him it shows just how many of them are really committed to the vision, not the man alone.

(It also makes it that much sweeter when he returns.)

There was another component to book four that I thought was creepy and cool, showing just how devilish the Inquisitors have been for decades: there’s a flashback to a demon attack long ago, but instead of killing the demon, the Inquisitors capture it and hide it in a tank of saltwater. Demons regenerate and their body parts are powerful sources of magic, so this is the equivalent of finding fissile nuclear material that constantly regrows, provided you know how to harvest it.

I’m not going to spoil the ending, but the demon has a role to play, and he pulls a move in the epilogue that has me rocking on my heels for the final book. Things just got really bad for people in the land of Lok.

The Characters

We’re 80% of the way through the saga, so these people have made a lot of progress in their arcs. There’s an undercurrent to the overall story that suggests the old gods are raising new champions who may eventually become gods themselves, like a pantheon from Greek mythology (or in this case, your preferred Southeast Asian flavor.)

Ashok is often called ‘the living embodiment of the Law.’ By the end of the third book a similar epithet is applied to a smuggler named Gutch, who becomes a living embodiment of commerce. The pantheon is taking shape and rather than resurrecting themselves, the old gods are raising up new ones in the face of the heretics that tried to erase them.

As for Ashok himself, he’s a lot like some other Correia protagonists: huge, powerful, capable of extreme violence, and unwilling to suffer fools. Still, he’s got a unique persona; you could describe Owen Pitt, Jake Sullivan, and Ashok Vadal with similar attributes, but they all have very different backstories, and if the three of them sat down at a table to play cards you’d get three very different conversations out of them. I find it refreshing that his leading men don’t waste time sorting through BS to figure out what’s going on around them. They’re competent and driven and they move the story forward.

It is perhaps in this way, though, that Ashok is the most different to other Correia characters, because his journey is one from atheism to apotheosis, and that will require a lot of experience and evidence. The series, then, is a showcase of those experiences, written at the pace of a thriller and not your average epic fantasy.

While the other characters have their own arcs (the aforementioned Thera, or the Keeper of Names Rada, or the villainous Grand Inquisitor Omand), my personal favorite has been Jagdish, a guy who started out way back in book one as potential Redshirt material and has really grown into his calling. He was a prison guard when Ashok was locked up, and during his time with the man, Jagdish started to realize the Inquisition was adding 2 + 2 and getting 7. He eventually joined the Sons, had a tragic loss in the family, and found an inner strength along the way.

It’s like if Jimmy Olsen from Superman decided he had protagonist energy and wanted to make something of himself. You can’t help but cheer for the guy as he claws his way from insignificance to relevance.

The World

I’m nobody’s expert on India, but the few things I know about the place make it clear that it inspired the world of Lok. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if by the end of book five we learn that this whole world is our Earth, remade from the wreckage of some deity’s tantrum in the future, and that Lok is in that quadrant of Asia.

There also seems to be strong parallels between current-day tech and the magic of Lok. The two magical sources are black steel and demon parts, which could be connected (I’m not exactly clear on how), and on more than one occasion I’ve wondered if Thera’s black steel prophet mirror is actually some sort of iPad device? It often behaves like one, but she never has to charge it or anything.

What I’m saying is this is definitely a fantasy world powered by gods and demons and magic, but it feels like it was built on ours, and the closer we get to the end, the more layers peel off to lead me there. We’ll have to see.

The most important element of the world, though—at least for this story—is the caste system. A driving force of books 3 and 4 has been the Inquisition’s efforts to pull an “Order 66” and execute every casteless individual in the world. This would include Ashok, who learned way back in book 1 that he was a casteless bastard. Since then it’s come to light that the casteless themselves are descendants of the “dead” god Ramrowan, and hold his power. Naturally the Inquisition is nervous about this, and they want to quash the opposition before the proof goes viral.

The Politics

Theofascist tyranny versus rugged liberty. So…more philosophical than political, but it’s a Larry book, he sneaks in a few jabs here and there.

Content

All of the profanity is Lok-centric. Nothing from our world really comes through. (Side note, check out the WriterDojo episode that Larry and Steve did on profanity, it’s excellent whether you write or not. He talks about this.)

There’s also a fair bit of violence, it’s prevalent throughout this series.

Who’s it for?

For all of the readers saying they want epic fantasy that doesn’t have a Western European bent to it, this whole series ought to be what they’re looking for. I have yet to read anything else like it.

If you like the worlds of epic fantasy but don’t like how slow and ponderous it all is, this is for you.

Why read it?

The best reason is right here: