SPFBO Champions: The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson

Welcome to the SPFBO Champions’ League! As you know, this is a special edition where we try to find out who will be the ultimate Champion among the last 10 SPFBO winners. Check out our SPFBO Chamopions’ League page for more info! SPFBO Champions’ League ends on December 20th, and we’ll post our reviews every 3 weeks or so.

Our 10th and last SPFBO Champion review is for The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson, the winner of SPFBO 6. The reviews within a post will be in alphabetical order.

A quick reminder about how we are proceeding in this edition: our judges had the freedom to opt out of reading any of the books due to personal interest, time restrictions, unforeseen life events, etc. Our aim is to have at least 4 reviews/scores for each Champion.

Once again, we’ll have a DNF rule in place: if a judge reads a book (if they didn’t opt out beforehand), they have to read at least 25% of it, although encouraged to read at least 50% since we are talking about champions. At whichever point they DNF, they’ll have to write a review and put a score in our spreadsheet.

As per the new rules for the SPFBO Champions’ Editidon, there aren’t going to be any public scores, but we’ll have them to help us decide the ranking. However, they won’t be shared anywhere. We will also have a mixed set of old and new reviews, meaning that if any of us reviewed a book before, we can reuse that review. Therefore, we’ll mark our reviews at the beginning as old or new.

For The Lost War, we have 3 reviews for your reading pleasure.

So, without further ado, let’s take a closer look at our 10th and last Champion!

Table of Contents

• About the Book
• Book Blurb
• Reviews
  • Arina
  • Drew
  • Timy

The war is over, but something is rotten in the state of Eidyn.

With a ragged peace in place, demons burn farmlands, violent Reivers roam the wilds and plague has spread beyond the Black Meadows. The country is on its knees.

In a society that fears and shuns him, Aranok is the first magically-skilled draoidh to be named King’s Envoy.

Now, charged with restoring an exiled foreign queen to her throne, he leads a group of strangers across the ravaged country. But at every step, a new mystery complicates their mission.

As bodies drop around them, new threats emerge and lies are revealed, can Aranok bring his companions together and uncover the conspiracy that threatens the kingdom?

Strap in for this twisted fantasy road trip from award-winning author Justin Lee Anderson.

Arina

Read: 100%
Review: New

Justin Lee Anderson’s The Lost War features a rich, textured world – complex geography, politics and a super interesting magical system that’s a bit of a mystery for both reader and the characters. Notably inspired by Scottish culture, The Lost War is equal parts mysterious and layered, perfect for readers who enjoy diving into sprawling fantasy backdrops.

After dethroning the previous king and winning a ravaging war against an evil necromancer who has been imprisoned, Aranok and Allandria, now the newly crowned’s envoys, must travel with a freshly-minted group of allies to carve new alliances. But with (essentially) fantasy zombies and demons roaming the land, nevermind struggling the myriad of strong personalities and moral differences, the group has a arduous task ahead. 

The characters each represent clear fantasy archetypes such as the holy knight, a priest, the young blacksmith, the pirate captain, the army general, the archer and the mage, but are subsequently fleshed out through new and old experiences, beliefs and clashing of opinions.

I really enjoyed getting to know each character and the world, but struggled with the meandering plot, which is widely intersped with longs battles that will surely satisfy some readers but didn’t quite work for me considering the detraction from a tangible goal.

Even though the twist at the end is fantastic– as it makes you retrace your steps and reevaluate both characters and events– the journey to it did not feel as exciting, and its delivery as an end-of-the-book exposition did not give much room for emotional fallout. The most important character motivation, the spark which originated the flame, is left unexplored and unexplained, and thus, some suspension of disbelief was required as to the logic behind the characters’ actions that led to the final revelation.

But Anderson’s characters have body and soul and make for an interesting cast for those looking for DnD-like adventure fantasy with a surprising twist.

Drew

Read: 100%
Review: New

In the interests of fairness, I should disclose my bias before we begin. Having been born and raised in Scotland, how could I not be drawn to a book that draws its inspirations from the language and legends of my homeland? Granted, it’s Edinburgh and not Glasgow, which is where I spent roughly a quarter of my life, but I’m not going to hold that against it or its author. 

The kingdom of Eidyn is still recovering from a costly war with a dark magician, or draoidh as The Lost War names those who have innate magical ability. Families have been torn apart, demons & curse victims roam freely, so the king decides to send his newly created advisory council on a mission to restore the deposed queen of a neighbouring nation and gain some political capital. 

As the disparate group, which includes some archetypal characters (unsurprising, since the author acknowledges this was born out a role-playing game) make their way from one objective to the next, we get to spend some time inside each of their heads, something that works really well to define their personalities and lift the above the stereotypes. The ‘head-hopping’ does take a little bit getting used to at first but is ultimately rewarding, as it helps give extra context to the way these characters interact with each other.

The journey they go on is a bit more haphazard. I don’t think that’s giving anything away, since Aranok, who is generally the main character, makes clear his intention to divert from his assigned task early on. The result is that the group tends to go from one objective to another as they travel across the kingdom, with the things that they discover along the way frequently leading to a new detour. Having said that, for the most part, these diversions seem to be organic and in keeping with what we come to know of the characters. 

The Lost War is a highly entertaining read and, if the revelation at the end of the book doesn’t leave you wanting to immediately dive into the next installment, well, I don’t know what else I could say.

Timy

Read: 100%
Review: Old – I reviewed this book for SPFBO 6, which means I read the original self-published version

This is my first time reading anything from Justin Lee Anderson and aside from a couple of friends loving it, I had no idea what to expect from The Lost War. Definitely not what I got out of it in the end. It took me way longer than I would have liked to get hooked, but eventually, I did, and I’m happy for it.

The war has just ended, Aranok, the king’s envoy and his bodyguard, Allandria just arrived back in town to rest. Or so they thought as King Janaeus has other ideas. Together with general Glorbad and the captain of the navy, Nirea they are sent to escort a foreign queen back to her country in the hopes of building diplomatic relationships. Aranok also takes the young blacksmith, Vastin under his wings. But Aranok is not really in a hurry as he is more worried about his family in Mournside. Although the war is over against a powerful draoidh, Eidyn can’t breathe freely yet. Its lands are ravaged by the neighboring Reivers (I still have no idea who they are and how they got into the whole conflict) as well as ridden by a plague that makes people into Blackened. The cast gets completed by the White Thorn Knight, Samily and the head of the order, Meristan. Their road is quite dangerous and twisty and does not lack blood and loss.

On the surface The Lost War seems like your average adventure fantasy – a group of mismatched people goes on a quest to save their kingdom while they come across dangerous creatures and enemies. And for the first half of the book, I kept wondering if there really wasn’t anything else to it. Questing is not among my favorite fantasy tropes, so I was a bit worried that I won’t see what everyone else likes about this book. Was the problem in me? The fact that I wasn’t really into the narrator – I half-listened to the audiobook, half-read it – didn’t help things either. It’s not like there was anything wrong with him, I think it might have been his accent? I’m not quite able to put my finger on it. One other thing that bothered me was the awkwardness of the dialogues, especially in the first half of the book. There were too many dialogue tags, especially “said” to the point it was really repetitive.

But I think my biggest issue overall was the fact that though the characters are very diverse and are well written, I just couldn’t really connect with any of them. It really comes down to the fact that there is a wide range of characters and they don’t have enough spotlight to really make us care for them on a deeper level.

Anyway, once I started to read it more than listen and it became clear there is a deeper mystery to the story, making the puzzle pieces dropped along the way slowly coming together, I got hooked. I had to know how the events will play out and who is behind the whole thing. My suspicions were proved, but Anderson still managed to surprise me with a twist toward the end. For which I tip my hat because it was damn smartly written. It took me a while to see it and I was on the verge of just putting the book aside, I’m glad I didn’t do it.

Though I was left with questions – well, this is only the first book of a series, so that’s expected – I felt like The Lost War got a satisfying ending. Justin Lee Anderson clearly put a lot of work into the worldbuilding and it shows. There were parts I especially loved, like the time the group spent at the University or their time in that kirk – I can’t be more specific, because spoilers. I also liked how the group grew together during their journey and how they learned to trust each other. And that one of the strongest characters is one of the youngest, Samily. I admired her dedication, rock-solid faith, quick wit and strength.

Although my review has been a bit on the critical side, I believe the Eidyn series has a lot of potential to become a great one. The Lost War, although an ambitious novel, fell a bit short on the execution. Felt like Anderson wanted to cram into a bit too much than it was required. Despite a rocky start, the mystery masterfully woven into the plot eventually got me hooked and then kept me glued to the pages. The Lost War is an intriguing blend of adventure, mystery and mindfuckery.

For more SPFBO content, please visit our SPFBO Champions’ League page!