We Are the Dead
The war is over. The enemy won. Now it's time to fight back.
For generations, the people of Jia - a land where magic has long since faded from the world, clinging on in only a few rare individuals - have been protected from the northern Egril hordes by their warrior caste, but their enemy has not been idle. They have rediscovered magic and use it to launch an overwhelming surprise attack. An invasion has begun.
And in moments, the war is over. Resistance is quashed. Kings and city leaders are barricaded in their homes awaiting banishment and execution, the warriors are massacred, and a helpless people submit to the brutality of Egril rule.
Jia's heroes have failed it. They are all gone. And yet... there is still hope. Soon the fate of the kingdom will fall into the hands of a schoolboy terrorist, a crippled Shulka warrior and his wheelchair bound son, a single mother desperate enough to do anything she can to protect her baby... and Tinnstra, disgraced daughter of the Shulka's greatest leader, who now lies dead by Egril hands.-Goodreads
Title: We Are the Dead
Series: The Last War #1
Author: Mike Shackle
Page Count: 488
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.25/5.0
Date Read: August 5th, 2022
Opening
I received a copy of We Are the Dead as my prize for winning the Guess the Book contest over on Dom's Book Club discord server. If you're not over there hanging out with us you should be! We have a great time in there talking books mostly but life in general at times too! On top of receiving this book recently, I also found out it was a the planned August buddy read with a few of us in the community. We began reading it the first of August and I think most of us dove right in immediately. There may have been one or two wrapping up other commitments first. The rule with this group is we couldn't share our ratings and reviews until the group was finished reading and we had a chance to share our thoughts with each other. So I'm typing this up ahead of time as I don't want my initial thoughts to stray due to those conversations. If I have some conflicting feelings after those conversations I'll add them to this review as a comparison.
I was honestly excited about this read as it's been on my radar since last year. In fact it's been on my Wishlist for several months as well. On top of that, the fact that Dom picked it for me thinking I'd enjoy it, I was anxious to get into it. I was enjoying the book right from the start. I'm starting to get used to a lot of the books I read introduce characters by chapter and this was following the same style. It doesn't take very long for some action to get going in this book. I started speculating a couple of things very early on. I'm happy to announce most of those have not gone as I thought they would. I'll get to those a bit more later on in a spoiler section below.
Pacing
The pacing in book one here was very good. Couple that with the fact the writing style itself was very easy to read and this meant this was a true page turner for me. I started this the first of the month but I didn't get to really read much the first two days because I was traveling for work. But by the third day I was knee deep into this one. I ended up pausing briefly at 50% on the fourth day to take a breather and read another book just for a short break. Then on the fifth day I powered through the rest of the book. I ended up staying awake about an extra two hours just to wrap it up. So yes I'd say the pacing was right up my alley!
World Building
World building was nicely done too. We got to know a lot about the two major cities most of this book takes place. Though they do elude a few times to other parts of the world which I hope we continue to learn more about in the future books. The major wasn't anything ground breaking but it was still enjoyable. We have very strong magic users on both sides and perhaps even a hint to the history of the gods and their role in the magic. Over the generations magic has become much rarer and the gap between power of those with and without has become a huge chasm at this point. The different cultures and military and even more subtle just fighting styles was nice throughout this book.
Character Development
I saved the character development for last. I think the development was done well. We really do learn quite a bit about several characters. The one thing I noticed though was I was well over half way through this book before I really started to connect to any of the main characters. They all had their annoying traits that just prevented me from liking them. By the end we definitely get some great characters though! At this point I think some of my favorites are Jax, Greener, Dren and Trinnstra. But there really are some great ones both on our protagonist and antagonist sides!
Closing
All in all I think this was a great book for my tastes. If you like a bit darker (not grim dark) suspenseful action packed fantasy, this might be a read for you!
Scoring
Pacing 4.5 / 5.0
Worldbuilding 4.0 / 5.0
Character Development 4.5 / 5.0
