Flintlocks And Magic: A Cold and Mortal Spring (G. Scott Huggins, 2024)

   A fortnight ago, I explored current Epic Fantasy in the form of Michael J. Sullivan’s popular Age of Myth. I enjoyed that book more than the review really showed, but in the end I found it both less epic and less fantastical than I’d want in epic fantasy. Why not instead try a book that’s been enthusiastically recommended to me? The hardback of A Cold and Mortal Spring was offered for borrowing by said friend but it was on sale for Kindle and I’m a weirdo who likes my e-reader, so I purchased it myself and dove right in.
  First off, a note on genre. As our extremely loud (and inaccurate) cover shows, this fantasy novel is in the ill-defined subgenre called “Flintlock Fantasy”, which means we have guns present. While that’s an immediate turn from what I think of as the “fantasy purist” tradition (Lord of the Rings on through the 70’s and 80’s Silver Age on down to Song of Ice and Fire), having guns mixed with your magic is a long tradition as well, something Jack Vance would approve of. Sure, Conan wouldn’t deal with a musket but Howard’s Solomon Kane suffered not a witch to live with a gun in his hand and buckle on his hat. This one here isn’t real-history-but-with-magic, this is full-up secondary world fiction, just know there will be ranks of musket-wielding soldiers here. And there will be soldiers, too, this is classed as Military Fantasy, which is shortened to MilF. I’d critique that abbreviation but I’m friends with the Fantasy Adventure Gaming crowd so…anyway, on to the book.
  Bottom line up front, this is a first-rate novel. Thoroughly entertaining, five stars, top-flight imaginative worldbuilding and action and intrigue, you won’t want to put it down. Spoilers will happen after this point, so if you’re adverse to them, stop now and go read this thing. I’ll wait for you.
  A Cold and Mortal Spring starts us off with a wonderful bang, with a young noble captain investigating a farming village overtaken by the Lotus, an addictive magical plant that farms the humans who eat it and turns them into obsessive gluttons. A zombie trope, with aspects of magical cursing and of course myths of real-world lotus, too, along with fears of plague. Our young captain Aethal (ÆÞal, I see you, Old English) is saved by his sentient flintlock rifle, Gun, and the loyalty of his troops. Wonderfully compelling start that feels very authentic to a 1700’s world with all the character dialogue and behavior. Grounding us like this makes for a much more epic and fantastical story than the ostensibly “epic fantasy” I reviewed before.
  Here though I must pause and render one of my two main critiques against this novel. There is no map given in the front page. This, my dear friends, is a sin for a fantasy novel. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien labored painfully as an amateur cartographer to give us Middle-earth, illustrated by hand, despite being no visual artist. In this era of free mapmaking software and ubiquitous scanners, you can give us a map. A picture is worth a thousand words but a map? One hundred thousand. Let this be an indicator of how much I enjoyed this book, it is good enough that I did not deduct a star for lack of map, which is normally automatic.
  I note this now because after the start we are thrust into the world of the Kingdom’s politics swiftly, and these are well-written politics. The kingdom occupies the last remaining livable continent on a world ravaged by Wishes from a mystical Well, granted once per human soul, with all the wonderment and strangeness that would result from that crucial bit of worldbuilding. The Well’s continent is a the Dark Continent, poisoned by centuries of wishes, and the old Empire’s continent is eaten wholly by the Lotus. Thus the kingdom here is the last civilized fortress of humanity, obsessively prepared over three centuries of exile for the reemergence of Lotus. I cannot speak highly enough of how well this is all built up, but of course people are people and nobody except for our protagonist is going to let a little looming apocalypse get in the way of political scrambling. A single honorable man in charge, with a few loyal retainers, set against corruption and petty feuds while mustering the resources of the last civilization against the end of all sentient life? Good.
  Here I must add my second critique, and while it isn’t fatal, if not controlled over the course of the series it may yet grow into a cancer. The church of the setting is controlled by a Cynical Corrupt Fanatic Pope who nihilistically believes that all life should end because it is tainted. This is a tired, tired, trope my friends. Other church leaders are shown to be kind and helpful, so not all is lost, but much hinges on the actual existence of this world’s God. There’s a danger of “evil religion as pap for the masses”, which if true in-world will undermine a lot of the mythic resonance being built up here. Tread with care.  
  We’re past the spoiler warning but I still won’t go further into describing the rest of the novel, there are twists and turns and swordfights and duels and secrets to uncover, it’s all very good. I will be reading further myself (the second book in the series has only recently come out), as this really does scratch the epic fantasy itch. Huggins is an impressive craftsman and it makes me want to check out his other series as well. It’s good to see that adventure in fantasy is not yet dead, and gives me hope that the genre may even recover from the doldrums of the late aughts and teens.