The Maleficent Seven

by Cameron Johnston

Black Herran was a dread demonologist, and the most ruthless general in all Essoran. She assembled the six most fearsome warriors to captain her armies: a necromancer, a vampire lord, a demigod, an orcish warleader, a pirate queen, and a twisted alchemist. Together they brought the whole continent to its knees... Until the day she abandoned her army, on the eve of total victory.

40 years later, she must bring her former captains back together for one final stand, in the small town of Tarnbrooke - the last bastion against a fanatical new enemy tearing through the land, intent on finishing the job Black Herran started years before.

Seven bloodthirsty monsters. One town. Their last hope.

• ISBN10: 0857669087
• ISBN13: 9780857669087
• Publish Date: 10 August 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Angry Robot
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 420
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780857669087

Reviews

[amyreadsalot]

With the amount of unfettered violence and gore that was a part of this story you would think that it would be vile but, as it turns out, The Maleficent Seven was actually quite amusing. I do love grimdark fantasy but I also have a limit on how much “dark” I want to experience. I was truly amazed that this story never devolved to the point of disgust for me. It should have but, as it turns out, the story was surprisingly quite fun and humorous, albeit very dark in nature.

My feeling is that I enjoyed the story as much as I did because all the characters were nearly equal on the morality scale. Yes, there were moments where the story dipped into places that I would have preferably not gone myself but, honestly, that was rather the fun part of it all. There was no true “good” versus “bad” in this story. It was just a matter of one being worse than the other. Overall, The Maleficent Seven was a cleverly spun tale that gripped my imagination and took it on very a very dark ride that I was immensely satisfied with.