The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de Castell – Review

Published: May 11, 2023

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Series: N/A (?)

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 384 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.5 Stars

Synopsis:
‘Seven powerful mages want to make the world a better place. We’re going to kill them first.’

Picture a wizard. Go ahead, close your eyes. There he is, see? Skinny old guy with a long straggly beard. No doubt he’s wearing iridescent silk robes that couldn’t protect his frail body from a light breeze. The hat’s a must, too, right? Big, floppy thing, covered in esoteric symbols that would instantly show every other mage where this one gets his magic? Wouldn’t want a simple steel helmet or something that might, you know, protect the part of him most needed for conjuring magical forces from being bashed in with a mace (or pretty much any household object).

Now open your eyes and let me show you what a  real  war mage looks like . . . but be you’re probably not going to like it, because we’re violent, angry, dangerously broken people who sell our skills to the highest bidder and be damned to any moral or ethical considerations.

At least, until such irritating concepts as  friendship  and  the end of the world  get in the way.

My name is Cade Ombra, and though I currently make my living as a mercenary wonderist, I used to have a far more noble-sounding job title – until I discovered the people I worked for weren’t quite as noble as I’d believed. Now I’m on the run and my only friend, a homicidal thunder mage, has invited me to join him on a suicide mission against the seven deadliest mages on the continent.  

Time to recruit some very bad people to help us on this job . . .

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I love knocking books off my ever growing TBR! The Malevolent Seven made its way onto my radar thanks to a particularly catchy title and synopsis and the book really went above and beyond my expectations. I’ve had mixed luck with Sebastien de Castell’s books but The Malevolent Seven was a perfect blend of humor, magic, and dark fantasy!

The story follows Cade Ombra, a complicated man full of clashing principles, who is working as a mercenary wonderist for a pretty awful warlord. At the time we meet Cade, he’s sick and tired of working for someone who’s chosen to kill a city full of civilians who surrendered to his army and Cade is actively planning his murder. Cade’s plan gets wrecked almost immediately and he finds himself escaping with his best friend who happens to be a crazed thunder mage, a newly awakened blood mage, and a jackal pup named Mr. Bones. Just for the record, I adore Mr. Bones. 

The trio of mages (and Mr. Bones) have accepted a job that Cade had literally just turned down and now must assemble a crew of awful, talented mages to fight some bad guys. Or, rather, even worse guys. The journey to assemble the crew was dark, surprisingly wacky, and really helped expand the worldbuilding. You see, there’s this whole rivalry with angels and demons, but it’s a little more secular and somewhat less heaven vs. hell. It’s more like a weird political rivalry and it’s disconcerting to realize the two rival factions have joined forces to stop the bad guys. They’re sponsoring Cade, et al. so they can stop whatever evil is trying to enter this world from another plane of existence.

I really enjoyed this book and while it’s not currently listed as part of a series, the ending certainly felt like it would lead to another installment. I won’t complain about that, and in fact, I’ll definitely read it should it exist! This is probably my favorite of Sebastien de Castell’s books that I’ve read thus far and I thought the worldbuilding was exciting and the characters compelling.