REVIEWS

Mar 05, 2022 Melissa Stacy                          rated it it was amazing. 

Shelves: 2022-reads, adventure, fantasy, fiction, friendship, kickass-main-characters, magic

"You know nothing, Jon Snow."

^^A one-sentence summary of how I felt reading this book.

Published in February 2022, "Pact of the Keeps: Blackwing Keep," by BK Staples and Theo Moon, is the first book in a fantasy series starring a Demonan Warlock named Akita Blackwing.

The story begins shortly before Akita inherits the title of Duchess and becomes the new leader of her family home, Blackwing Keep. She must immediately gather a team of warriors together to confront a number of monsters and Dark Wizards threatening her home and all she holds dear.

I am such a noob when it comes to all forms of modern gaming (tabletop Dungeons & Dragons as well as all of the many video games, Role-Playing Games/RPGs, and Massively Multiplayer Online Games/MMOs that are either based on or inspired by D&D) that I had no idea how to make sense of this book.

I read the first 40% and was increasingly overwhelmed by my level of ignorance. I immediately solicited help from YouTube and a number of friends. I had to learn that there is such a thing as Character Class/Character Category, and certain standard things that go into those character archetypes, such as Clerics, Rogues, Dragonkin, etc. In the games, these Character Classes are grouped together into diverse teams who then work together in various forms of battle and combat.

This novel assumes that the reader possesses a basic working knowledge of these character and plot conventions, and my friends who game certainly had no trouble reading this book. Two of my friends who play tabletop D&D said the opening chapters of this book sounded like a D&D game. Two of my friends who are obsessed with video games and read litRPGs said this book read like regular high fantasy to them, not like Gamer Lit.

The reader's individual experience of gaming plays a role in how this book feels to read. For me, being able to understand the book meant I needed to do some serious gaming research, and not be such a noob, because basic gaming terminology is not defined in the book. Reading this novel without knowing anything about gaming seemed more difficult to me than reading C.S. Lewis without any understanding of Christianity.

I think the majority of readers who enjoy science fiction and fantasy novels also enjoy gaming, and this novel was a great opportunity for me to learn a lot more about the gaming and video game industries as a whole.

Once I was fluent in the book's terminology, there were a few things in the story that made me uncomfortable. In the second half of the book, Akita oversees the torture and execution of two prisoners. While Akita herself doesn't perform the torture or execute the two prisoners herself, she is glad to see it done. Some of my friends who play video games said they don't play any RPGs that feature a positive view of torture and capital punishment, but in my online research, I saw that there are some video games that promote this.

I never enjoy seeing a story's heroes (the morally-righteous protagonists) promote a positive view of torture and capital punishment. I would rather see a story's villains promoting torture and capital punishment. It makes me deeply uncomfortable when a story's heroes engage in and promote such things. I'd rather see the heroes sentence enemies to lifelong imprisonment than execution; but I do understand that many popular fantasy novels promote execution. (Ned Stark, for instance, in the novel "A Game of Thrones.")

Akita also served food and drink to the audience right before this execution, treating the prisoners' torture and death like a party, and that didn't sit very well with me, either. I'm sure there are probably MMOs that feature events like this (large groups of people enjoying refreshments before the hero team kills the condemned), and if I understood those aspects of gaming better, this scene might have felt more commonplace to me.

I can also see a lot of readers having no problem with Akita and her team's behavior, because the book makes it clear that the people they are executing were traitors.

Once Akita and her friends face their first Leviathan, the action in this book keeps increasing. The monsters get more and more powerful, and require more and more resources to fight. There are a lot of creative and creepy details in this book. I especially enjoyed the appearance of a Basilisk, a goblin army, and the eerie "pods" discovered later in the story. The dragons and other flying creatures in this book were also a treat.

There is a large cast of characters in the novel, and new characters are introduced throughout the book, right up until the end. It's clear that the authors are building up a large and extensive world to fill multiple books in this series.

The character names are all really creative, and there is a huge amount of diversity in all the different character types used in the story. I would guess that fans of World of Warcraft and other MMOs would definitely enjoy this novel.

I would recommend "Pact of the Keeps: Blackwing Keep" to anyone who enjoys high fantasy. Especially if you are familiar with the gaming conventions used in this narrative, I'm sure you'll find the battles, flying dragons, and monsters that much more fun to read about.

And if you're a noob like me, this book is a great opportunity to learn more about D&D and video games. I know I sure learned a *lot* from reading this book.

(I also suspect that a certain fighter mentioned at the end of the book will appear in Book 2... I have a hunch we haven't seen the last of her.)

There's a great cliffhanger at the end of this novel. It's an excellent way to propel the reader right into the next book in this series. I am sure Akita and her friends will have many more trials and dangers ahead. The humor and camaraderie of her team is really delightful, and the adventures they face are nonstop.

Highly recommended high fantasy! Five stars. (less)