Review: However Many Must Die by Phil Williams

Blurb:

Wild Wish was trained to do one thing: kill.

Saved from a lonely backwater existence by a global war, Wish couldn't believe her luck when she got into the Blood Scouts. Now she gets to share tents with an all-female platoon of night-stalking, giant-slaying, boat-sinking, battle-swaying legends in the making.

The problem is, they keep dying.

And they've been given their worst assignment yet.

The enemy Dread Corps are combining magics deep within the nightmare lands of Low Slane, to unleash a weapon that could sway the entire war. It's up to the Blood Scouts to stop them – with a journey that gets more dangerous with every step.

Far behind enemy lines, death hangs in the air. Monsters lurk around every corner.

Are Wish's skills – and positive attitude – enough to keep her Blood Scouts alive?

Or will the cost of survival finally break her?

Get ready for the first epic entry in a new series, and a new world, of dark military fantasy from Phil Williams. Start reading today!

Review:

As with my previous review, I first heard of this book when the author tweeted that he brought books to WorldCon and was looking for interested  or intrigued people (here be the post). This time however I had a bit more of a difficult time trying to find Phil Williams, and roughly five hours after searching for a bald dude with glasses, I found him by the Broken Binding table. That place was basically the meet up place since apparently everyone knew where it was and was super easy to find even if you didn’t know. Picked up a book copy, got it signed, and started reading it a week or so after I got back from WorldCon. Once I finished the book, I placed it down, looked at it, looked at the names of the authors other works, and “hmm”’d in both contentment at getting the story that was promised in the blurb, and was also pleasantly surprised with how well it pulled off the feeling of a WW1 setting in a fantasy world.

If I had to interest you into reading this, I’d give you these two sentences:

““Wild” Wish Evans wanted to escape her mundane existence. And when global war beckons, she answers the call. It’s far more than she wished for.”,

alongside the usual question about whether or not you want more info. 

Though, again, it’s not up to par with what is in the novel, nor does it convey the amount of chaos and death that rampaged through this particular one.

So, to begin, we have “Wild” Wish Evans, from a quaint little town she’s pretty sure no one has ever heard of, wanting to escape the feeling of mundane existence. War happens, she signs up and… about a year later she finds herself on the front lines, running with her division under the command of a captain. They successfully complete that covert mission, and lose a few members of the group, as to be expected. After that, she gets sent on over yonder to secure a town and whilst doing so, her squad mates find body parts and weird contraptions. This leads to a more grim, less merry mission - find out what the hell the enemies are planning and where they sourced the operation from. A few weeks, months of travelling, Wild Wish grows a bit as a character, is saddened by her friends constantly dying, and is woefully underprepared for being in charge of a platoon. A few more things happen, shenanigans and explosions ensue and suddenly she finds herself a teacher by the end of it.

This leads to the plot of “However Many Must Die”. It was straightforward, yet not without its quirks. First off, there’s two plotlines. One is from the perspective of “Wild” Wish, and her rather straightforward trek towards the stronghold of the experiments. The other from an unknown character as now who wants to further her position within her country’s ranks. And there is a gap between the events of Wish’s chapters and the events of the unknown character’s chapters. The unknown character has a less straightforward path, but no less of an interesting one. Where Wish’s line of events is almost constant battle with a bit of reprieve here or there with her pining after her squadmates (she gets teased about this endlessly by her comrades), the unknown character’s line of events is more subtlety with a bit of violence sprinkled in here and there. By the end of the novel, the two paths intersect, and the culmination of the dual narratives take place. And it works.

After that, there’s the world building that Phil Williams has used for this novel. I said earlier that this was similar to WW1, yet by the time this war is happening, there’s something akin to the Geneva convention already in place. And yet… it is the same slaughterhouse that World War One was. And that is due to two things. One, the empire that is being fought against, Drail, encompasses a vast amount of territory. Two, the vast amount of races embroiled in combat. It’s a hodgepodge collection including but not limited to goblins, giants and matticks (more than likely inspired by the akephaloi, face in the chest, no head). Those are not the only factors that play into it. The next thing Phil takes advantage of is the 9 year war period he’s crafted. This story takes place two years into the war, lasting maybe a few months, giving him a lot of leeway to play with the before, the after, and the myths springing up around this conflict.

Finally, to top off that, Williams has included small blurbs from external sources about various conflicts that happen within a chapter, foreshadowing or hinting at what might happen, yet it still requires the reading of said chapter for it to click.

Lastly, there’s magic. That might not sound like it’d have much consequence, especially since most of the combat is done with artillery and ammunition. But… this is where this world's Geneva convention comes into play. The geniuses of the nation regulated magic use but not the destructive forces of industrial age weapons. Two things can be gleaned by that. First, the magicians of previous wars were so destructive that they signed an agreement not to mess with certain domains of magic (necromancy, demonancy, etc.). Secondly, they innovated weapons of mass death after the treaty as a substitute and have no guidelines for how those are used. This leads to two outcomes, inhumane usage of gas and fire and secretly breaking that treaty without any permission to do so. Inhumane usage of gas and fire has already been seen in WWI so there is not much need to go into that horror. But breaking that treaty on magic… that leads to some horrific war crimes hidden by the death toll of various modern weaponry. I both love and hate how graphic some parts get in that case.

Besides the various war crimes being committed by the a part of the Drail army (I doubt that Stancliff, one of two leaders within the Comity, would do that), magic is also used to heal, suss out traitors, cause natural disasters and other various usages that make magic wielders invaluable to have around. 

Now, if I had to mope about one thing about this book is that it was hard to care too much about the side characters. I saw snippets of their personality, got to experience how they interacted with Wish, yet, there wasn’t enough depth to parts of the connections. It felt more like Wish was projecting what she wanted to believe onto each of her friends, and they obliged out of comradic sistership. As a wider whole though, it doesn’t remove much of the story, nor does it do much to alter the course of the plot, and others might view it differently.

If you like trench warfare, scouts taking on a daring mission, inquisitors, and crazy science experiments, this novel is for you.

As always, if you’ve gotten to this point, thank you for reading this review and I hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next read. If not, don’t fret, there’s a review for almost every genre of literature up here, and there’s plenty more reviews to come.

Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.