Son Of The Morning

Wow, what a ride this novel was. Highly ambitious and imaginative, Son of Morning proves itself a player in the genre. The book is a blend of alternative history blended with fantasy. It's a long novel at 700 pages, but it doesn't feel that way when you start reading it. The historical period re-imagined is The Hundred Year war (1337 to 1453) which was a brutal period of warefare between England and France.What Mark Alder does is take this famous war, re-imagine the historical events that occurred, then pack in the fantasy elements. In addition to troops mustered to fight the war, minions from hell (demons, monsters, and devils) and the hordes of heaven (angels and saints) are unleashed into the conflict, sublimating the conflict to a world war of between heaven, hell, and earth and every sphere between.Awesomeness. But it's not a book that gets lost in vast concept and huge battles (of which there are both), but also one that's driven by a cast of complex characters. And did I mention it's drimdark as they come? The real historical period was a dark time in the histories of both France and England, and this is fully reflected here in the narrative and the setting. But add the hordes of hell to the mix and a troubled bunch of characters who are flawed and neither good nor evil, and you have the underpinnings of something grand.If you love the Mazalan books, if you love Glen Cook's Black Company and Scott R. Bakker, if you love war, and dirt, grim, and shit, and violence, then you're going to love this book.