The Armored Saint

January 8, 2018
SF/F thriller author Cole (Siege Line) makes an uninspiring first venture into epic fantasy with this flat trilogy opener, which is unoriginal in its cod–medieval Europe setting, idealized peasant characters, and generally portentous tone. Sixteen-year-old peasant girl Heloise aspires to something other than marriage and babies, but she lives in a dangerous world: at any time, hidden wizards could suddenly turn into interdimensional portals, allowing terrible demons to come through and devour everyone and everything she loves. Only the clichéd Order of religious knights can keep the demons back by hunting and destroying the wizards. But the order is itself, of course, a cruelly despotic organization, and knights nearly kill Heloise upon their first encounter with her for no reason except that they don’t think peasant lives are worth very much. When her village is forced to take part in brutally and protractedly massacring another village, an operation conducted on suspicions of wizardry that Heloise knows to be false, she finds herself and her family and friends set against the Order—and the demons are still a problem. The entire book is focused on getting Heloise to the climactic fight scene, which then proceeds completely predictably, and the book ends just when it seems like something might start to happen. Agent: Joshua A. Bilmes, JABberwocky Literary.

Starred review from January 1, 2018
Wizardry and magic have been outlawed in this epic fantasy trilogy starter from Cole, author of the popular Shadow Ops series (beginning with Control Point, 2012). The Order monitors the citizens of the kingdom to make sure that they don't practice magic, which they believe comes from the devil. Naturally, the Order are terrible, power-hungry individuals who terrorize the population with threats of what they will do if they suspect a wizard, and terrify the public with threats of what wizards can do if they exist. But Heloise cannot help herself, and she repeatedly stands up to the Order to protect her family and even jumps one of them to save her best friend, Basina, whom she loves. Cole has created a dark medieval world that by the end only has a small sliver of light in it. The spunky Heloise fights for her family and friends and makes it easy to cheer her on through her adventures. A must-read for fans of Erika Johansen's Queen of the Tearling series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)