Review: Sins of the Mother by Rob J. Hayes
Blurb:
In her darklight the world will burn.
Eskara Helsene is missing. She left her queendom, her friends, her children, even her own name behind. No one has seen the Corpse Queen for a decade.
Someone is murdering Sourcerers, forcing them to reject their magic and opening scars in reality, and monsters from the Other World are pouring through.
When an old acquaintance turns up out of the blue, Eska has no choice but to investigate the murders and the holes in reality. Can she stop the murderer before the entire world is consumed? And will the conflict reveal her true nature?
Sins of the Mother is the 4th book in the best-selling The War Eternal Series. A gripping dark epic fantasy perfect for fans of Patrick Rothfuss and Mark Lawrence.
Review:
The War Eternal series by Rob J. Hayes has been a series for me that defies expectations. It’s a dark fantasy told in first-person by an absolute power-mad edgelord of a main character. First impressions of a series with that kind of description are usually going to be negative…but not in the hands of someone like Rob J. Hayes. The first three books of the series were a wild thrill ride detailing the rise of the Corpse Queen, Eskara Helsene, but the fourth book, Sins of the Mother, only continues to defy expectations. In showing a more grounded and remorseful Eska, Hayes’ dark fantasy epic has never been stronger, and only further cements Eska as one of modern fantasy’s most memorable characters.
At the end of the previous book, From Cold Ashes Risen, Eskara Helsene has her own queendom, but now, it’s been over a decade since anyone has seen her. The Corpse Queen has left her seat of power, and abandoned everything from her friends and children to even her own title behind. But as rifts to the Other World begin to break open across the land, Eska must emerge from her life of quiet and solitude to investigate the cause…and confront the consequences of everything she has committed, and everything she has left behind.
For three books, Hayes depicted Eska’s brutal rise to power, all in the name of the revenge she sought on the Terrelan Empire. She commanded an army of the dead, played host to a shadow that fed on fear, controlled the very storms themselves. But, in Sins of the Mother, we see a very different side to Eska. She’s old and broken, the Chronomancy that has been accelerating her aging since the end of the first book leaving her with the body of a woman decades older than her true age. She’s coming to terms with all the atrocities she committed in the name of vengeance, and the past is continuing to haunt her. We’ve seen her at her lowest and climb to her highest over a mountain of corpses, and now we see a descent from that peak.
It's thanks to this that Eska has become a much more powerful character from a narrative perspective. We have long been acquainted with Eska the Sourcerer and warrior queen, but this book finally gives us perspective on Eska the mother. And damn, what a terrible mother she is. Framing the story around her failings as a mother allowed Hayes to display a much more humane side to a power-hungry monster like Eska, and the flashbacks to the circumstances which led to her abandoning everything were an absolute joy to read. After three books of Eska’s ascent, there was only so much more that could be done before she became a one-note character. I view the characterization similarly to Kratos from the God of War series, whose character arc after the original game was just “I got so angry I killed all the gods,” and then the 2018 reboot gave him a much more grounded journey against the backdrop of fatherhood and confronting his past. Sins of the Mother follows that almost to a tee, and it’s all the better for it.
Everything from the plot, to the use of magic, to the expansion of the world of the War Eternal, is the best it’s ever been in the series, thanks to the narrower scope. Frankly, it all comes back to Eska; prior books had many moving parts that worked well together in sequence, but all Sins of the Mother needed to reach the heights it does was Eska’s characterization, her attempts to right the wrongs she committed, even when stripped of so much that made her physically powerful, and, in trying to repair her relationship with her children, confronting the titular sins of the mother.
Emotionally powerful with plenty of heavy twists and turns, the penultimate entry to the War Eternal series is an absolute tour de force. Sins of the Mother hits all the right notes to allow Eska to ascend to loftier heights than ever before. I can’t wait to see where the Corpse Queen’s final battle takes her.
