Suffer no wizard to live”
Myke Cole is known for his service in the military, being the endless butt of jokes from Sam Sykes on twitter, Trigger Discipline, being a breakout star of the CBS TV show Hunted and writing modern fantasy about how the military would deal with the Return of Magic to the world (The Shadow Ops series). With The Armored Saint, Cole expands his oeuvre in the writing sphere to secondary world fantasy.
In a world where those who use magic, or even suspected of using magic, are hunted and killed by an oppressive Inquisition-like arm of the Emperor called the Order, a young woman, Heloise, finds her defiance of the Order leads to danger for herself, her family, and her community. In making those mistakes however, Heloise finds in her the opportunity and chance to fight against tyranny by becoming a hero.
There are plenty of interesting moving parts in Cole’s world that surrounds his heroine. We have a brutal medieval like world where magic is feared, hated and brutally suppressed by a authoritarian theocratic order that makes the real world Inquisition look cute and cuddly. The fact that their grey cloaks and flails are disguised by the innocent sounding title of Pilgrim makes these oppressive figures even more malevolent. This world also has a fear of magic that may or may not be justified, but certainly the populace is scared to paralysis by even the whiff of a mention that there might a demon-opening magician in their midst, secretly or otherwise, even without the fear that it might bring the Order down on their heads.
Where the novella shows its invention in worldbuilding beyond the nebulous Empire and its Inquisition-like Order arm in dealing with dark magic is the War Engines. See that gorgeous armored suit around Heloise on the cover? It’s not a suit of armor. Instead it is a War Engine, a magically powered medieval mecha unit that is used to mainly fight demons and other enemies of the Emperor. The War Engine on the cover, and as the novella progresses, very much is a Chekov’s Gun throughout the story, silently waiting for a chance to be used. I am happy to report that the Gun does in fact, fire. And it is, indeed, glorious.
The novella, however, does not work without Heloise being developed and studied as a character. This novella really is an origin story of a superhero. Heloise is the daughter of a professional writer and at the start of the novella is following in her father’s footsteps. As we first meet her, she is most interested in papers and inks and the mundane tasks of such a life. As the plot unspools, Heloise’s exposure to brutal circumstance fires up a slowly burning core of resistance to tyranny to oppression and monstrosity. Our heroine goes through doubt and trial, gaining an ally and tutor, before challenge and forces drive her in the end to take heroic action and make a true stand. The novella takes its patient time to bring Heloise to the point of that heroic action, but the entire novella is needed to develop Heloise and her world to the point where she can plausibly be a superhero. And given the darkness of her world and what it faces, a superhero is precisely what is needed. But Heloise does not take that journey without cost, and pain and loss. It’s excellently done.
The Armored Saint offers a brand new direction for Cole’s writing, and hopefully, a chance for him to gain a new and expanded audience. I’ve enjoyed his work for years, and am excited to see more of his world and Heloise’s place in it. There’s the making of a true hero here, a story of hope and defiance and action in a dark and troubling word. That’s a message and a protagonist we can use in our own times, in our own society, in spades.
You can find out even more about The Armored Saint in Episode 346 of the podcast, where I join Shaun in talking to Myke Cole about the book.
