Seventh Decimate: A sorely disappointing experience

Seventh Decimate by Stephen R. Donaldson

Seventh Decimate (2017) is the first book of Stephen R. Donaldson’s newest series, THE GREAT GOD’S WAR. The story centers on two nations that have been locked for generations in devastating warfare, each having their own version of how the war began. Amika has all the advantages: size, money, population, trading partners, more wielders of magical forces (“decimates”), against the smaller, land-locked, more beleaguered Belleger.

The story, though, opens up with a potential turning point — Belleger’s discovery of how to use the decimate of fire to manufacture rifles and thus kill magisters at a distance. It’s enough to force yet another stalemate, but before they can make enough to truly turn the tide, Belleger’s sorcerers (called “magisters”) all lose their ability to wield power, including the necessary decimate of fire.

Before Amika can use its magic to roll over the suddenly powerless Belleger, Prince Bifalt is sent on a quest across an uncharted desert in search of a great library of magic where he hopes to find a way to reverse the loss of magic. What he finds isn’t what he expected.

To be honest, I barely was able to get through Seventh Decimate — “a mess” would be how I would sum it up — a sorely disappointing experience based on my prior enjoyment of this author.

Where to start? One problem is that Donaldson has stripped so much of the story down, maybe to give it a sort of parable/allegory feel, that it feels almost utterly random. There’s little sense of world-building (a shocker from this author), leaving to a sense that characters are moving across a literal map rather than an actual place. There are hints of a world beyond what we see in characters introduced on the Prince’s journey, but because we see only singular such characters, they feel like plot constructions rather than part of a living world. Similarly, explanations of how things (such as Belleger’s ignorance of things outside their country) are often implausible, and so seem to be existent because the story requires them to be that way.

The plot is episodic, with events happening too slowly in too disconnected a fashion and with abrupt shifts, until we reach the Library itself, where things settle into a more focused, cohesive story.

The main character, Bifalt, is often a one-note Angry Man, and seems to respond not as a person would but as a person meant to convey some philosophical concepts has to. Take Thomas Covenant, ratchet up his anger (yes, really), and then rob him of his humanity and sense of reality, and that’s Bifalt. Meanwhile, only a few side characters feel substantive at all. And the prose shows odd signs of repetition and slackness (every time I read that Bifalt “bit his cheek” I was reminded of how much I hated all that “braid pulling” in WHEEL OF TIME). And too much of the book relies on telling us what characters feel or think rather than showing us.

Really, this was the most disappointing read I’ve had in some time. I’ve been sent book two, The War Within, which was recently published, so I will read it and hope this series improves drastically.