Review: The Daughters' War by Christopher Buehlman

Blurb:

Enter the fray in this luminous new adventure from Christopher Buehlman, set during the war-torn, goblin-infested years just before The Blacktongue Thief.

The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men.

They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war.

Now, our daughters take up arms.

Galva ― Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill ― has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted ― not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.

Review:

Prequels are a tricky business. They can either supplement the previous material with background information that does not necessarily expand the world in meaningful ways, or they can enhance the world’s lore and stand hand-in-hand as an essential part of a larger story. With The Daughters’ War, Christopher Buehlman aims for the latter in pairing this with his exemplary novel The Blacktongue Thief. However, a lack of direction and lack of cohesion with the previous book has this falling more into the former.

Galva—or known as Galvicha to her three brothers—has decided to go against her family’s wishes and join the Raven Knights in defense against a horde of goblins overrunning a city. Accompanied by magic-enhanced black birds called war corvids, Galva may hold the key in stopping the goblin advance in their goal toward holding mankind in their thrall. But the road ahead is destined to be bloody, and when faced with the realities of war, nothing can be taken for granted—not strategy, not the bonds of family, and not even hope itself.

The premise of The Daughters’ War is simple, and in execution, it largely stays that way. Those who read The Blacktongue Thief beforehand will be familiar with Galva and what became of her family in the Goblin Wars. Galva’s relation of these events is told in the form of a memoir, with sporadic interludes introduced as letters written by her brother Amiel. In the truest sense, this is a war memoir, and it does not shy away from some of the darker and grittier aspects of the war. Buehlman’s prose is sharp and biting, a stark departure from the more lighthearted tone that carried some of The Blacktongue Thief, but a clear beacon to his talents as a writer to take such a hard shift but lose nothing for it in terms of quality.

Worldbuilding is where The Daughters’ War shines the most. We saw some of the goblin-infused horrors in The Blacktongue Thief, and heard plenty of the Goblin Wars, but they are on full display in this book. Certain of the battle sequences are assuredly not for the faint of heart, with visceral descriptions that would warrant averted eyes were it shown in front of you. It’s gritty stuff, but never in excess—just enough to warrant a churned stomach, but never enough to put the book down to never be picked back up again. I had found the goblins unsettling in The Blacktongue Thief, and they’re only more so here.

Naturally, Galva’s backstory—and her relations with her family—are the focus here, and it’s here that The Daughters’ War began to lose me a bit. While the book is a necessary illumination on a prominent supporting character in the previous book, I found the plot never really gripped me. Galva is a good character, as is Amiel, but beyond that, there were not any characters who particularly gripped me to the point that many of them tended to blend together. This is only amplified by the plot, and Galva’s motivations, feeling a bit aimless for a large portion of the book. The hows and whats were quite evident, especially with the knowledge of Galva’s characterization in The Blacktongue Thief, but the whys felt a bit more nebulous. Compounding this further is the narration itself. While I did say that Buelhman’s prose remains strong despite the tonal shift, it’s the characterization that lost me. Galva is more stoic, shorter of words, and this is reflected in her tone of narration that I found myself losing interest in what was happening. It made sense not to have the same tone as The Blacktongue Thief, but I still found myself longing for that more.

Ultimately, The Daughters’ War is a mixed bag for me. It’s a brutal and evocative war memoir with a memorable lead that falters in depicting what surrounds that lead. It remains a worthwhile supplement to The Blacktongue Thief, and expanding Galva’s character was certainly illuminating. But that’s all I found it to be: supplementary reading, rather than required reading—which is an unfortunate reality for a prequel to bear. For big fans of the previous book, though, there is still plenty to enjoy here. It just didn’t hit for me as well as I would have hoped.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go look up what “goblin mode” means and go do that somewhere.