Book Review: A Spell for the Revolution by C C Finley

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A Spell for the Revolution by C.C. Finlay


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
A Spell for the Revolution is the second book in a series of American-Revolutionary-War historical fantasy. The series premise is that the witch hunts of Salem actually did target some people with special abilities, who were forced underground. Nearly a hundred years later, witches still persist in secret. The protagonist, Proctor Brown, is a young man trying to balance his service in the local militia (which is rapidly heading towards armed rebellion against the British troops) and his engagement to a local merchant's daughter (who isn't too thrilled by the thought of armed rebellion). He's also able to see the future, something his mother helps to hide. Anyway, and there will be spoilers for the first book here...

Proctor is finally discovered by the local magic community and the network that helps them find training and safe haven -- like the network that would later help transport escaped slaves northward, it was mostly run by the Religious Society of Friends. Unfortunately, the Covenant, a group of European witches interested in making the revolution fail, notice Proctor and assume the Americans have recruited supernatural talent, so they target the safe haven. Proctor decides that he can't sit by and let people be killed, so he takes action, and discovers this conspiracy of the Covenant, who want to stop the Americans because they want to use the British Empire as a focus to Rule the World. Or something.

... Anyway, the sequel takes place in the fall of 1776, where Proctor and Deborah (the daughter of the safe house owners in the first book) are trying to keep their charges safe. When they find out the Covenant is going after an orphan boy with a talent*, Proctor and Deborah book it to Long Island. They encounter the Continental Army under Washington, and discover that the Covenant cursed them by shackling ghosts to any soldier in the field. Proctor and Deborah have to come up with a way to lift the curse before the weight of the ghosts causes a catastrophic defeat or the Covenant's agents kill them. (And also rescue their original target.)

Now, I was a bit leery of the books series, because well... I'm American. I know that, all other things being equal, I'll take an American side in a conflict -- in other words, it's easy for me to feel sympathy for the patriots in the Revolutionary War and harder for me to root for the British. Having Our Heroes be Patriots and the Bad Guys be Europeans (or a southern Loyalist slave owner in one case**) doesn't pose much moral complexity for me. (For that matter, it seems like most non-fantasy lit about the Revolutionary War that I read as a kid has Patriot protagonists.) Add in that the Bad Guys are Bad Guys -- helping a nation become a superpower so you can use it as a focus for your magic and control non-witches, drawing power off of the unwilling, enslaving spirits of the dead, raising demons. It's not even a case where both sides are equally underhanded. I might even tolerate it more if it was not!America and not!Britain, but painting a historical conflict in terms of Good and Evil bothers me. I'm contrasting something like the Temeraire series***, where nations don't appear to be any more good or evil than others. It could be worse -- it could be a current conflict.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the in the second book. While I realize some historical events and persons are going to show up, this felt a bit silly. So, General Washington was involved, because he's the leader of the army. And Thomas Paine, writer of revolutionary pamphlets, plays a role in the solution to the central conflict. And the Battle of Trenton and other conflicts fought in the NYC/New Jersey area during the summer and fall of 1776, and the fire in New York City. But the point where Proctor and Deborah ran into Nathan Hale on the road in Long Island, figure out he's a spy for the Americans†, and then later see his execution (and the whole 'I regret I have but one life to give for my country') thing, was where my disbelief snapped -- it just came across as the writer trying to make every event that happened in the area something that the protagonists saw. (I mean, I might have even bought it if Hale was only mentioned, or they didn't run into him on the way to the city -- but at that point, it just got a bit silly.)

So, I think both are going to PaperBackSwap and I won't bother reading the next one.

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* In the previous book, a Covenant spy kept a slave around and drew off her talent. It was generally figured out that's why they were so powerful -- they were stealing from others.

** One thing with having many of the minor protagonists being Friends or friends of Friends means that you don't have to deal with the moral issue of slavery as much as you might otherwise have to. Or, for that matter, shitty treatment of women.

Temeraire features a British cast in the Napoleonic era where Napoleon is portrayed as an honorable enemy, France becomes more progressive on dragons' rights (copying China), and the British admiralty are willing to purposefully infect the dragons of Europe with a deadly disease if it ends the war. The human protagonist smuggles the cure to France because, to him, unleashing a biological weapon on conscript soldiers and noncombatants is WRONG, then returns to get imprisoned for treason. And then France invades England, and his superior officer/lover yells at him for risking his career when someone would have eventually leaked the cure. For that matter, even the protagonist (who is portrayed as semi-enlightened for his era), shows some racist and sexist attitudes, and it takes him a book and a half to realize that his dragon and best friend is essentially a slave conscript-soldier and the only place where he could live free was halfway around the world from Britain.

† Because he is apparently the worst spy ever. Seriously, they spend five minutes with him and see right through his cover story, without use of magic. How anyone expected him to check out troop movements in occupied territory is beyond me. Granted, historically Hale was caught, but writing his exposure as a spy because he was easy to read bothers me.

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