More SPFBO finalists! This one had an audiobook for me to listen to while I did chores and what have you, so I opted for that option. This one is looong. The audiobook is 32 hours long, to put that in perspective.
Violence & Vigilance is book one of Turesia Untamed, an epic fantasy series featuring an eternal vendetta, scars of grief and loss, untethered rage, and hope against all odds.
Irdessa the Undying, a renowned arena fighter in Fohrvylda, has escaped imprisonment but at great cost. Broken and alone, she must outwit and outfight her pursuers.
Basalt Kale, a failed Consonant monk of the lowest order, embarks on a quest to improve Ausgan but discovers vile secrets of his order that he cannot abide.
The heathens of Fohrvylda amass ships and beasts of war to sail the Faithless Sea and assault the monks of Ausgan, who will greet the steel-bearing invaders with elemental destruction.
Violence & Vigilance is a story of survival with dark humor, exotic settings, savage beasts, and damaged characters. If you enjoy the grittiness of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law or the urgency of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, you’ll love Violence & Vigilance.
Despite how long this book is, it is a little difficult to sum up. There are a host of POV characters and while the book mostly focuses on two of them, there are a lot of people telling this story.
Violence & Vigilance is the story of Basalt Kale, who is a monk in the order that follows The Sovereign – an immortal man they revere as somewhat of a god. Monks of this order sing to gain elemental magic powers, which despite being in the order since he was a baby, Kale has not gained any of this magic. He does however have the power to negate this magic and unlike any other negators, he doesn’t get sick from doing this. He finds out some secrets about his order and he escapes the order and helps the native people rise up against them.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Irdessa the Undying is an arena fighter in Fohvylda, the city of yet another immortal man. Irdessa escapes the arena and flees, constantly being tracked by her captors. She flees back to her home city and becomes the leader of a vanguard of fighters who rise up against Fohvylda.
There’s a war brewing between the Monks of Ausgan on one side of the sea, and the Heathens of Fohvylda on the other side, and it is a war that has been brewing for hundreds of years. Kale and Irdessa find themselves right in the middle of everything, fighting mostly just to survive.
This book was very long, as I said, and it took me a while to get into it fully. There is quite a lot of lead up to anything of any real substance happening. It got there eventually, but the beginning was just a little bloaty for my liking.
Violence & Vigilance had some really interesting characters. I wasn’t a huge fan of Irdessa at first, but she grew on me by the end. Kale was a character that I could cheer for from the beginning, being the underdog of the story. I looked forward to the chapters where we got Kale’s part of the story, though sometimes they felt too far apart.
After I did get into it, I listened to the whole thing in about 3 sittings – over about 3 days. Jonathan Waters did a great job with the narration, enough that listening to 8+ hours of a book in a day didn’t seem like it was as long as it was. My headphones died before my interest waned, which is always a positive, in my opinion.
It wasn’t my favorite finalist I’ve read thusfar but I can understand how it got to be a finalist. Most of my gripes are minor, and all told I had a good time once this one got going. I gave Violence & Vigilance 7.5/10 stars. It was definitely an epic grimdark adventure, so if you’re into that, you’ll probably like this one!
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