Books you should know: Bazil Broketail

[frigidmagi]

Bazil Broketail was written in 1992 by Christopher Rowley. Rowley is an American writer who has written fantasy, sci-fi and adventure books. Now that that's out of the way let's get to the meat right?

This as you can guess is fantasy novel, a military fantasy novel actually. And what a fantasy military it presents. Our two main characters are a fighting team to strike terror in the hearts of any pre-industrial fighter and more then a few post industrial ones. One of them is a orphan boy in his teens. The other? Is a bipedal dragon over 10 feet tall and weighing in the neighbourhood of 2 tons. Info dump ahoy.

Relkin, our dragonboy and Bazil, the dragon are a team that were welded together at a very young age (Relkin was 6, Bazil just hatched), by the village of Quosh. Bazil is a leatherback wyvren dragon, which means he's a medium weight wingless dragon, who live in a sort of partnership with humans in the Argonath Empire (the name is a Tolken shout out yes). The dragons serve as walking talking sword slinging tanks in the Legions while being cared for by the orphans. And the Argonath needs them desperately. Because the Argonath is actually a colonization effort by a female magic user dominated society(called witches) from a group of islands called the Rose islands to push back an inhuman foe. Called the Masters of Padmasa, they were men who threw away their humanity in the quest for (say it with me guys) UNLIMITED POWER! While they don't spurn the idea of diplomacy, they can also fall back on hordes of imps, trolls and other unnatural monsters controlled by ruthless men working for power and coin.

The Imps and Trolls are unnatural creatures created using perverted magic. It's a deadly magic as well. Trolls are gestated in the wombs of cows or other mammals of comparable size. They're a little smaller then Dragons but there are a shit ton more of them has they're produced, where as the dragons are born and raised. Imps are even worse, the enemy uses human women, implanting an imp and having the enslaved women give birth to imp after imp until she dies. This frankly is the final sin and injustice in my eyes, that the Masters of Padmasa would regard even humanity and the event of birth as just one more raw material to ensure their dominance. They are frankly as bad as predatory cannibals.

Now this could easily turn very cliche. Sickening so in fact, but Rowley manages to avoid that. First off you saw that info dump up there? Rowley doesn't do that. You find this out a piece at a time from character discussion and 1st hand evidence. Also Rowley manages to give you a flawed society fighting for it's life against a society that is much worse and has no chance of improving.

The book opens with Relkin and Bazil having gotten to the city of Marnei called the White City due to the white stone walls surrounding it. There they have a problem, before they had been working as sort of sanction mercenaries for the various petty nobles of the blue hills their birth region. However their last boss decided to replace them trolls because well in Relkin's own words

"They're cheap, give them weak beer and sex with farm animals and they're happy."

Just a tad disgusting right? And this from a 13 year old boy. Well they had to leave their job under less then legal circumstances and this leaves them without a "dragon stamp" a licisence proving that Bazil is a law abiding reptilian killing machine and fit to join the Legions of the Argonath. To get around this he convinces the 3rd character of our little drama Lagdalen of the Tarcho, a girl in her mid to late teens (15? 16?) who is actually a very pretty girl despite the rather clunky name. She's high born but is making an utter hash of her career as a temple witch, which is a prestigious and traditional career for girls of her class. And here we get a sense of the deep paranoia running throughout the Argonath as Lagdalen agrees to help him get a fake Dragon Stamp from his buddy in the office. See she has to go get a stamp herself... For her birthday! This society is so paperbound and paranoid that you have to get your birth certifiate updated every year to ensure some enemy spy hasn't taken your place. In fact the office is guarded by trained men and women to watch for sneakiness and Lagdalen is quietly freaking out that Relkin is an enemy agent and she's screwing up... Again.

A 15 year old girl is worried that a 13 year old boy may be a enemy spy sent to infiltrate her nation's military and destroy it from within. That's how close to the knife's edge the Argonath cities are.

And we soon find out... While Relkin is loyal, Lagdalen's fears about enemy spies are utterly and totally justified. The city has been penetrated by an enemy magician with several plots in the works to corrupt the military, the government and the royal family while he parties in high society. Going by the name Thrembode the New (was there an old?), we're introduced to him while he's getting into the Princess pants (James Bond and him could swap stories). See the Argonath cities all have their own monarchs, who owe fealty to the Rose Emperor (not the name I would have picked but hey). Each city is a Constitutional Monarchy with the King and Queen having much but limited power. In this case King Sanker is quarrelling with the Imperial Government, he wants his son Erald to be King... Erald is a spoiled idiot with an ego bigger then the whole Senate. The Imperials are pushing Bestia... Who is lazy, shallow, suggestible and as you might have guessed not a good judge of character... She's still the better choice (good God this book could also serve as an argument against hereditary government when you think about it). Thrembode has been corrupting Erald fairly easily leading him down the garden path to sadism and inhumanity and is trying to bang Bestia mostly because he's bored.

Let me take a minute to talk about Thrembode. He's an utter self centred, cowardly scheming bastard and I enjoy it. He's a competent villain who spends most of this book outwitting and staying one step ahead of the heroes through a combination of quick wits, prior planning and unholy Satan spawned luck.

He panics though on the news of the arrival of the Great Witch Lessis, a women several hundred years old and pretty decent at magic and covert work. Panicing at the thought that Lessis is on to him he kickstarts several plots to cover his escape. He also on the way kidnaps the princess. Before he goes though he arranges for Bazil, who was sadly maimed in a sparring bout in the Legion try outs (losing the end of his prehensile tail), to be poisoned because Lessis showed some interest in him to the point of regrowing his tail and trying to kill the witch herself.

Lessis, Lagdalen and Relkin managed to save Bazil and foil the assassination attempt but Thrembodes gets away with Bestia in tow. Lessis recruits Lagdalen for the Office of Unusual Insight (the witches spy agency) and Relkin and Bazil join the Legions and are sent off to right the Teetol, tribal allies of the enemy. This is the first 165 pages.

The remaining 311 pages deal with these 4 meeting up again, Relkin and Bazil having spent the winter fighting the Teetol in brutal guerilla warfare, Lessis and Lagdalen having spent it chasing Thermbode up and down the length of the Argonath, him always escaping with the Princess in tow. Lessis is so desperate to retake the princess that she drafts Relkin's unit, a short company of men and dragons who were being given light duty for a quest that will take them to the enemies regional headquarters and strong hold of the Doom, a inhuman creation of the Masters created to run the war, an alien created intelligence locked in a black 30ft sphere of rock. It was made to be a heartless, unrelenting enemy feeling only rage, hate and a desire to control or destroy. This place is called Tummuz Orgmeen and Relkin, Bazil and the soldiers of the Argonath are outnumbered, outclassed and over their heads. But they'll have to steal a victory anyways.

What I like about this book: Despite the fact that this story could have easily fallen into standard cliches, Rowley keeps it interesting. The characters are human with flaws but still manage to be good people and in some cases, heroes rising above their mistakes and clay feet. The soldiers of the Legion are written fairly realistically, the troops aren't blind submissive sheep and have to be persuaded and talked into continuing a mission against overwhelming odds. In fact several times the unit verges on mutiny in face of what any troop in any army would consider a suicide mission. The Legions themselves are a kind of odd mix, they feel like 17th or 18th century Englishmen in Roman Legions. With Medieval embellishments like heavy Calvary and crossbows. Somehow this works fairly well though. Add in the Dragons who fight in squadrons attached to human regiments and you have one of the cooler human fantasy warmachines. Elves appear in this book but are dealt with vastly differently from Tolken. They're human seeming creatures who have no mothers, emerging magically from trees. They come off as actually a bit alien and removed from human concerns. The book manages to be gritty without being to grim dark and deals with mature topics like sex, slavery, war and others without losing it's grip and jumping into the realms of written porn.

I heavily recommend this book. In fact I'm gonna say this, you know all the popularity and attention Robert Jordan got? Rowley should have had it, his books are light years better.

You can find Bazil and the sequels on Amazon and you won't regret it.