The Forgotten Saga of the Lost Company
By Michael Maguire
A review by INFAMOUS🦀
If we take a look at the current fantasy/sword and sorcery genre, there are mainly two trends that dominate the marketplace: romantasy and epic/high fantasy.
Romantasy really just uses the elements of the fantasy genre to present an inherently romantic story or simply put—a love story.
Epic/high fantasy instead focuses more on ‘scope’: epic battles, large groups of characters, vast lands populated by a plethora of fantastic races.
Whether you enjoy either trend of fantasy, too much of anything after some time can get boring and exhausting, even. Sometimes it is more beneficial to turn down the heat some, dim the lights, and instead of throwing a huge party have a small get-together with only a few yet good friends, if you know where I’m going with my metaphor.
THE COVER:
When Maguire first invited me to review his book, The Forgotten Saga of the Lost Company, what first got my attention was its cover. In a AI-art age where most covers are filled with unrealistically beautiful women, with all the right curves and all the right ‘assets’, this cover presented a subject that to me came across as unique, intriguing, and mysterious. Not your stereotypical book cover pin up girl but rather a female warrior that instantly makes you want to open the book and find out her story.
SELF-CONTAINED NARRATIVE:
Going back to my initial thoughts, as soon as we start reading the prologue and then dive into chapter 1, we quickly find out that this is not going to be a colossal epic story with scope, multiple settings, and multiple casts of characters. The story is very self-contained, beginning to end. We start our journey with the Company and we end our journey with the Company.
This was a breath of fresh air because let’s face it, we can easily get burned out on reading epic fantasy books, all trying to be massive in scope. By focusing just on this group of men and women who form the Lost Company, everything feels more personal and more intimate, even. We get to know these characters in ways that otherwise we could never know and understand, and this creates a stronger emotional engagement on behalf of me and you—the readers.
PLOT:
When a company of the army of Ethylund goes into battle to defend their country against the invaders known as the Aeneans (inspired certainly by the Romans), things don’t go as planned and they find themselves lost behind enemy lines. Captain Roma (the woman on the cover) is now tasked with bringing her men back home, but the problem is, the way back is now patrolled by enemy garrisons, so they must find another way to get back home, which entails marching straight into enemy territory.
MAGES AND THE MAGIC FACTOR:
It is interesting to notice how in this world, both armies make use of mages for military purposes. So while the Aeneans use mages to invade Ethylund and other countries, the defenders also use mages of their own to counter the magic of their invaders.
When our company gets lost within enemy territory, it is thanks to mage Mane and his incantations that they are able to avoid being spotted by the enemy for so long. A cat and mouse game will begin within the realm of magic between Mane and the mages who work for the enemy, while Captain Roma and her men try to figure out a way not to starve while finding a way home.
CAPTAIN ROMA/STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER:
Roma, to me, IS the story, period. My first sense of intrigue with the cover artwork was soon replaced with absolute love and admiration for this character once I read more about her. Do you want to know how to write a strong female character that works? Then read The Forgotten Saga!
Roma is strong, but not in the sense that she could match a man twice her size in strength. Though a skilled fighter with the sword, her true strength is being a leader at heart, and knowing when to push her men at times and when to sacrifice herself for them, at other times. What makes her also so compelling is the fact that until the end, there is an aura of mystery around her past, about her background. Who was Roma before the war? Before becoming captain? With other characters such as Tuggs or Tris, we get to know who they were before joining the ranks. But with Roma, we never find out, which in this case works in a fantastic way because as a reader, I couldn’t stop thinking about her even after I closed the book.
PROSE:
I thought the prose overall was ‘just okay’ and felt like the writer could have chosen a more evocative style to match the setting. This is not to say that we encounter too much modern vernacular in the book, but lines like:
“But I won’t be able to relax until I see everyone is okay. So, just help me up, okay?”
To me, lines like the above full of ‘okays’ just don’t bode well, given the nature of the characters, the period, and the place.
INFO-DUMP:
As I said already, what I enjoyed about this story is how it is focused only on this company of soldiers and their efforts to get back home. We don’t need to know why there’s a war; knowing there’s one is good enough. We don’t need to know why the Aeneans want to invade Ethylund so bad; knowing that they want to invade is enough. However at some point Maguire decided that some of this stuff was important to know:
“Of course, Ethylund had once been part of the Empire only two hundred years ago. The many, leaderless tribes had been easily conquered by the Empire of the Fist and over time had been taught civility.”
And it goes on and on with more exposition dump that we really don’t care about, nor do we need. We want to know about this company and how the hell will they be able to make it home alive, that’s it!
CONCLUSIONS:
The Forgotten Saga of the Lost Company is exactly what I wanted to read right now in an oversaturated marketplace of epic fantasy stories. It achieved its goal in creating a smaller-scale, yet more intimate narrative, in which we establish a strong emotional attachment to several of the characters. I mentioned Captain Roma but honestly there are more than a handful of other characters who grabbed my attention: Sharp, the soldier who can never stop sharpening his knives; Danza, the giant woman with a heart of gold; Lash, who, though seriously wounded to the leg, kept on going without wavering… the list of memorable characters goes on and on.
Oh, and folks die here too! All jokes aside, Maguire is not afraid of killing off characters when the story rightfully calls for it. Even main characters at times will be sacrificed for the greater good of the company, which might make some of us (myself included) even temporarily hate the author for doing so (thanks for making me shed a few tears, Michael!)
The prose is decent but I feel like with some more awareness Maguire could write in a style that feels more evocative. The use of ‘okay’ was a little too distracting for me at times.
The unnecessary info-dump, albeit not too extensive, could have also been eliminated altogether. We don’t care why they are at war. Usually the motives of war never change anyway. If we are going to keep things self-contained let’s keep them self-contained all the way, shall we?
If you love fantasy but feel burned out on all the mega epic tales and long for a story that is more personable, more intimate, and with characters you will end up laughing with, crying with, even suffering with at some level, pick up a copy of The Forgotten Saga today!
And a note to Maguire: how about a novel focused exclusively on Roma? I think she deserves it and yours truly would certainly appreciate it!
🦀