ReviewStack: The Shieldbreaker Saga Book 1 by Thomas Clark Schecter

Desert Viking Mongols in Crisis

Two warring factions set their stage in an inhospitable red desert just south of the Disputed Lands. The Poyhor, led by their Khoghon of Khogons —Ersev are conquerors, the Hodrir, lead by their dying Khoghon Vartya, are defenders. As the Poyhor approach, the Hodrir’s situation worsens dramatically; the death of a mostly beloved king, leaving a hair-trigger youngest son in charge of uniting his clan for battle. This is Kareva. Quick to violence, haunted by the spectre of his dead traitor brother. Effectively unfit to lead, effectively unfit for his position.

Frankly, I am not a fantasy head. And the fantasy I do love, is generally the stuff you’d scoff at and say “psh, name ten of their albums.” Tolkien, LeGuin, Pratchett, Gaiman. Often, fantasy falls into the same trap as a lot of Sci-Fi, what some might call HAITE plots (Here’s An Idea, The End), and that is my issue with most of the genre. We have cool concepts, cool plots, and characters that are only there to butler the author in an almost fan-service manner. I am okay with depth of worldbuilding, I am cool with the speculative aspects, yet so much of fantasy is reading the ten thousand pages of whale anatomy in Moby Dick; I know it’s important, I just don’t care. I live in the real world, I am intrigued by real world things, hell, my wife has caught me on multiple occasions reading vehicle or instruction manuals *for fun*. I can’t do that in the world of fiction. If an author can’t make a piece of their world make sense with character actions, then I’ll tell ya, that bit of worldbuilding doesn’t matter. 

It’s like Thomas Clark Schecter had a list of all the tropes fantasy does wrong, and used that as his guide of things to NOT do with Shieldbreaker. Consequently, he made a piece of fantasy that I find fundamental to the genre. But it’s less about what he didn’t do wrong, and more about what he did do right. What drives Schecter’s work is his intelligence, emotional and otherwise. From the introductions of characters like Kareva, Sividri, Oriek, and Alakuz, these people have lived fully before entering the scene. No characters appear like magic fairies on the page and then disappear into the abyss when it’s not their scene. In fact, the joy of Shieldbreaker is that in a way, it demands the existence of scenes that readers are not seeing, and which are never written. I believe that it was George Lucas who said that the evidence of good worldbuilding is the impression that there are things happening off screen. Shieldbreaker leans heavily into this. Schecter creates webs of causality based wholly on character actions. Their madnesses have deep cultural roots, their prejudices evolve from a lived context, and how they come to cooperate (when they do) or butt heads follows an impeccably human line of cognitive and emotional logic. Shieldbreaker is thus, the Godfather in a scant inhabited Arizona, long, long ago and far, far away.

I would not consider myself a gamer, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have played games. Shieldbreaker takes a very similar tack as games like Mass Effect. In fact, reading Shieldbreaker is quite akin to a renegade run in ME. Kareva’s is the story of bringing together unlikely allies to go toe to toe with an enemy they could simply never beat in any universe. As we know from ME, it is only with strong character logic that we can make this type of story work, and as I’ve stated in other places and times, Tom could have been a therapist; and if only these characters had discovered the value of therapy before the events of the book. Tom knows what breaks a person, Tom knows the individual limits of each character with such (almost insane) surgical precision, there is not a vowel, a tensed shoulder, a long breath, a blinked eye that is out of place. It’s this precision that separates the amateurs from the real pros. You can feel each character enter a room that doesn’t even exist. The action, the tonality, the chosen words are specific to each individual. Even when Schecter waxes minimalist, you know so much about these people that you can imagine precisely how they might be standing or inflecting without anyone having to tell you. In this sense, Schecter is as tricky a trickster as any serious professional. He is so precise in what he reveals about his understanding of characters and situations, he needs only to seed notions that you, the reader, then grow and cultivate yourself. 

Shit Schecter, ever thought about going into marketing? Edward Bernays has nothing on you.

There are a few characters, I wish to study for a moment to exemplify this. Kareva is the new leader of the Hodrir by the second chapter, and, as stated before, is profoundly unfit. He loves his violence and he is quick to it. He operates under the delusion that he can unite groups of people who have hated each other for ages. He is losing his mind. He is, in every respect, a loose cannon who must learn to temper himself, and keep his madness in check at once. Already, this character is given the impossible task of navigating his new position with a limited sort of depth to his self-awareness. He is a lost cause, who refuses to be a lost cause. It is a noble but detrimental insanity. We, the reader, are given the impression that we are about to watch a horrific, bloody trainwreck. But what we get is a fascinating tapestry of well-weaved causality. Without spoiling too much, there is no act of god that allows Kareva to accomplish what he does, there are people, circumstances and choices. And that's the thing with his character choices, everything follows an indestructible line of logic, in ways that has made even pros waver. For those who watched Season 1 of Arcane, we all know that with the character decisions in Season 2, we could see slightly the hand of the creators pushing motivations in places that would have only made sense with more context, that we were not provided. Tom avoids this failure entirely and without fault. Sividri is another example of a character, whose arc is undeniable, beautiful and haunting. Earlier on in the story we see her make an impossible decision, one that seems to betray her history, but it is precisely her personal retrospection of her position that guides her to make the decision that guides her arc. And we see her doing this throughout. She is forced to reframe her past to make the decisions that move her through, and co-create the plot. It is masterful character work, from an author with an obvious penchant for extreme empathizing.

And the characters each feed the core themes of this story. The poison of hubris is in constant battle with the ugliness of redemption. In Christianity, salvation is an act of self mutilation, even suicide, in Shieldbreaker redemption too, is similarly bloodsoaked, but without the act of faith. The spilling of blood is an act of worship to their fellow soldier. There are higher powers insinuated in the world of the Disputed Lands, they are cause for motivation, but they are not the psychological core of motivation. Each character must prove themselves to each other through a degree of mutilation. For the likes of Kareva and Alakuz, it is tempering violence with strategy. For Metan and Sividri, it is using it wholly in tandem to the max of their capacities, and within the limitations of their fellow soldiers. At its core, Shieldbreaker is a study of the relationship between violence and identity. Who are you with a blade at your throat? Who are you when you must commit a genocide? Who are you when your blade is someone else’s stomach? And why does the violence define you? But of course, like sex writing, violence is not about violence. Schecter uses violence the same way Nicolas Winding Refn uses violence in Only God Forgives; the characters must discover that their violence is an act of holy sacrifice, the Kosher slaughter of the animal to the god of survival; the violence must unite the prey and predator in an eternal dance. To quote Forrest Bondurant, “It’s not the violence that sets man apart, it’s the distance he’s willing to go.” And to what end? Oddly, community unification and redemption.

Finding an audience for this work is only a challenge because there can be so many. For one, if you are a history nerd, this is for you. The book alludes to a very lived history, and that is likely because Schecter himself lifts his concepts not directly from historical events, but from their inspirations. I think it is obvious that the fantasy crowd will enjoy this, even without a dense magic system. I think Shakespeare lovers can easily find home in his work. Shieldbreaker is Macbethian in nature, Lear in proclivity and sometimes, the reader receives a much deserved break into the fun of Much Ado. Personally, this is the camp I fall into, as a Shakespeare nut. Also, I truly believe this is a masculine fantasy that, for its deep love of character and emotional intelligence, can be truly beloved by the women who enjoyed reads like M.L. Wang’s Sword of Kaigen. It fits with lovers of G.R.R Martin’s work, those who appreciated David Michod’s The King. As for music? Appreciators of Mastadon’s Leviathan, Reliqa’s Eventide EP, or The Dear Hunter’s Act III will all find this work fitting well into their field of interests.

Ultimately, I cannot recommend this series enough. Schecter’s book is available in print below, as well as on his Substack (mostly behind a paywall). There are more books in this series, yet to come, and currently he is working on a prequel project called Daughters of Vei, which he is publishing for free (as of writing) on his Substack. You can follow him and engage with him personally. You’ll find, he is at the very least, quite lovable and quite dedicated to the indie writing community. Show this man some love, read his work.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

FIND TOM HERE

The Long Short of It:

Do I like it? Yes

Is it good? Hell Yes

Should you read it? Absolutely.