# 3
Format: Paperback, 336 pages
Release Date: June 13, 2023
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Source: Publisher
Genre: Fantasy
The final installment in Hugo Award–winning author Matt Wallace’s
epic and spellbinding Savage Rebellion trilogy about a utopian city with
a dark secret—and the underdogs who will expose it, or die trying.
The final war for the nation of Crache has begun.
At
the helm of the people’s rebellion is Evie, the Sparrow General. She
has been captured by the Skrian, Crache’s vicious army, and is being
brought back to the Capitol for punishment. But reinforcements are
coming for her.
Dyeawan, who has climbed from street urchin to
Crache’s highest seat of power through clever schemes and ruthless
bloodshed, finds trouble on every front once she arrives. The rebellion
approaches, and there are whispers of a martyr within the city who holds
enough sway to stage a coup. If she doesn’t act quickly, her rule will
be short-lived.
As the women who hold the nation’s future meet
each other from different sides of the battlefield, will they be able to
find a shared vision of Crache, or will they destroy each other first?
Matt Wallace's Savage Crowns is the third and final installment in the authors Savage Rebellion trilogy. The story takes place in a country called Crache and alternates between several key characters; Evie aka Sparrow General; Sirach, a Sicculant soldier who has become Evie's second in command of her rebellion; and Taru, a retainer who was trained to protect important members of the Crache society, but ended up being forced into being a member of a group of soldiers called Savages.
The fourth character is Dyeaman aka slider who is a member of the Crache's Planning Cadre. Dyeaman recently discovered that she has a sister, and that was after she murdered several players in the Planning Cadre. Dyeaman is called slider because set gets around in what's called a conveyance which she built herself. Dyeaman is an extremely intelligent character, but she is outgunned by the Protectorate Ministry that would love to see her fail and be replace to someone more aligned with their ideology.
At the end of Savage Bounty, another key character, Lexi Xia, was in a bad place and likely did not survive. But now we have a new character that has risen from the ashes, and it seems she may be Evie's once chance to escape her fate. Meanwhile, Evie,
the Sparrow General, has been captured by the Skrian, Crache’s
vicious army, and is being brought back to the Capitol for punishment.
Taru, who hooked up with a group called Rok Islanders, now has to convince them to align with the surviving members of Evie's rag tag game of rebels or face her own demise.
It is apparent that Wallace chose to write about strong women who have their backs against the wall. How they fight and survive will keep you entertained. Evie was given a job to find her employer, Brio, and ended up being one of the strongest characters in this series. She turned the world on its head, and brought together the rag tag, and those tossed away like garbage. If you have read this series, and are curious about Lexi and her confrontation with the Ignobles who want to take over Crache, I suggest you read the book since anything I say will spoil the book for you.
In the end, Evie, Dyeawan, and others like the Ragged Matron, have to come together and align in a war for the very fabric and soul of the country that has done them all wrong. How do you save a country that hates you and wants to destroy you? Wallace ties everything together quite entertainingly and I will look forward to seeing what he creates next.
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1. Jailbird
JAILBIRD
A BIRDCAGE. THEY HAVE ACTUALLY built a giant fucking birdcage and locked Evie inside of it.
A
long time after waking, curled up at the bottom of the thing, she is
still at a loss. Not by her capture or witnessing what may have been the
fall of her rebellion, but by her prison. It’s entirely out of
character for the Skrain. It’s out of character for any artifice of the
Crachian machine, really. Crache isn’t much for flair or imagination.
The symbol that adorns every Skrain banner, the sparse, simple shape of
an ant, is well chosen. Crache is a nation of utility above all else.
The long caravan currently slouching at a glacial rattle over the
countryside has more than a few wagons fitted with cages; Evie can see
them from her perch, the ants headed back to their colony. Constructing
this ornate monstrosity especially for her (at least she surmises that
as its purpose) instead of simply chucking her into a regular prison
wagon like refuse is decidedly un-ant-like.
Yet here Evie sits,
between tall wrought-iron bars wrapped around her to form a perfectly
slim cylinder. There are a few flourishes of concentric circles and
sculpted ants adorning the spaces between those bars, as well as the
square pad on the cage door, from which hangs the largest key lock Evie
has ever seen. The Skrain have lined the hard bottom of the cage with
stale-smelling hay. She isn’t certain whether it’s for effect or for
when she will inevitably have to piss inside this contraption.
Evie
can only guess the whole “Sparrow General” persona must really be
shaking up the status quo back in the Capitol, so much so they feel they
have to lean into that persona to defeat the newly spun legend.
Not that she thinks of herself as a “legend,” of course.
Even
if she did, her current status as a source of amusement for the Skrain
foot soldiers constantly trudging past her is humbling, to say the
least. They revel in treating her like a shaved monkey in a menagerie.
She can only imagine what a welcome distraction it is from lugging their
full armor kits along with spear and shield on foot through the
wretched heat of the day.
If they’re not bending over and
flipping up their tunic flaps to give her a view of a full moon, they
are flashing their poorly groomed genitals at her. The accompanying
verbal abuse is just as crude, if less imaginative.
“That’s a proper sparrow, that is!” one of the soldiers chuckles. “Bloody proper!”
What accent even is that? Evie wonders, digging a fist against her churning guts.
Their
attempted humiliation of her isn’t as wrenching as Evie is certain
they’d hoped. The motion is the worst part. The whole cage is constantly
swinging from a hook arched behind the largest horse-drawn wagon in the
Skrain caravan. It hasn’t stopped swaying and jostling her for hours.
She’s felt like she’s been throwing up for at least half that time, but
Evie is always intent on waiting until one or more of the soldiers rides
or walks close enough to the cage for her to vomit through the bars
onto them.
The only feeling strong enough to divert Evie’s
attention from her stomach is the searing pain in her left leg. The back
of her calf muscle feels as though angry hornets are nesting there. She
can’t contort herself to see how long or how deep the gash from the
battle is, but it definitely feels deep and long enough. They haven’t
yet given her any water to drink, let alone an excess to clean her
wounds. Neither has a surgeon, or even a drunken Skrain field medic, so
much as tended to a single scrape. They seem to have simply checked her
armor for weapons and then tossed her into her current confines.
Perhaps,
if she’s really lucky, the infection in her leg will kill her before
they reach the Capitol. She knows that’s where they’re taking her. Her
constant audience has made that clear enough. The whole Skrain army is
very excited about the prospect of Evie being paraded inside her cage up
and down the narrow streets of Crache’s greatest city, on display for
the whole of the citizenry to see.
Evie doesn’t really want to die, of course. But the idea of that spectacle seems a pale alternative at the moment.
Mostly
she just wishes she’d seen that lance coming, the one that slashed her
calf and pierced her horse on the battlefield. If she’d avoided that
single sharp edge, her horse wouldn’t have gone down, and even if the
outcome of the battle had remained unchanged, her own fate might have
been different, perhaps even cage-free. At the very least, she’d be more
comfortable right now.
Evie still doesn’t quite understand what
happened there at the end of the battle, only that more of her people
survived and hopefully escaped than she imagined was possible when she
saw the Skrain, regrouped, bearing down on them and realized their
sudden guests, the Rok Islanders, weren’t charging to the rebellion’s
rescue.
Except they did, finally, or at least enough of the Islander army charged to make a difference.
It
didn’t make any sense to Evie. If the Rok had indeed come to join the
rebellion, why hadn’t they charged sooner, and in full force? If the
reverse was true, and they were willing to sacrifice the rebels to
weaken the Skrain, why hadn’t they waited longer? Why hadn’t they
continued to sit on the horizon until the last of Evie’s rebels had
fallen, taking as many Skrain soldiers with them as possible?
Evie
remembers thinking at the time, as much as she could cogently form
thoughts while deflecting blades trying to end her, that the Rok’s
charge seemed half-hearted and uncoordinated as it barreled towards the
fray. Whatever the truth of those events, when the Rok chariots crashed
into the wreckage of the Skrain siege towers and practically rode over
the clashing armies, Evie knew only that she had to get what was left of
her people to safety. It was too late to hope to turn the tide of the
battle, and Evie did not trust the Islanders as allies enough to be sure
they wouldn’t turn their blades and chariot spikes on the rebels.
The
last truly vivid memory she has of the battle’s end was opening the
throat of a Skrain soldier, then turning her head to seek Bam with her
gaze. She found him pummeling enemy soldiers not half a dozen yards from
where she stood, Sirach cutting Skrain to ribbons not far beyond that.
Evie had shouted a simple order at him, to gather everyone he could and
retreat. No sooner had the words screeched out than several Rok chariots
blasted the ground between them and she lost sight of Bam, Sirach, and
the rest.
Immediately after that, her world went to black. She
must have been hit from behind, knocked out, because her next conscious
memory is of the bottom of her birdcage. She had a headache for a while,
but that pain has since faded into the background, replaced by the
worsening fire in her leg.
The pounding of shod horse hooves
tearing up the ground below breaks Evie from her reveries. She peers
through the bars of her birdcage at a mounted Skrain who rears his horse
to heel so he can gaze up at her. His helmet is more elaborate than the
average ground-pounder, marking him as a captain. His face shows the
wear and scars of advancing age, but the expression on it says the man
thinks quite a lot of himself.
Skrain soldiers generally all look
the same to Evie, regardless of rank or added pomp. She remembers this
captain, however. That face is burned into her brain. He was the master
of ceremonies who presided over the deathmatch between Sirach and Mother
Manai, Evie’s mentor and most trusted advisor among the former Savage
Legionnaires. Evie watched from concealment in the massive Skrain
encampment as her lover was forced to kill her best friend while the
soldiers laughed and drank and made merry.
“How is our most honored guest enjoying her accommodations?”
“I
could use a drink,” Evie, too tired and too cut up to conjure witty
banter, admits in a voice that is labored and hoarse. “And a surgeon, to
be honest.”
The blustery man’s expression takes on a look of mock horror. “What inconsiderate hosts you must find us.”
The
Skrain captain fishes a deflated wineskin from his saddlebags,
unstopping it and tipping his head. Evie watches as he squeezes a brief
jet of rice wine from the skin.
Licking his lips, he tosses the empty-looking thing through the bars and into Evie’s cage.
Evie
sighs. Without shame or hesitation, she picks up the skin and tips back
her own head, both hands twisting the flattened bladder into a single
braid, as if she’s attempting to wring the neck of an animal. She
manages to force a few remaining droplets of rice wine to fall upon her
cracked, blood-scabbed lips, her tongue greedily lapping them up.
She
ignores the pleasure Evie knows is plastered all over the captain’s
face as he is treated to the sight of her demeaning herself.
Evie extends a hand through the bars, offering the captain his wineskin.
“Keep it,” he says, sounding more cautious than generous.
Not as stupid as he looks, she thinks.
“Besides,
it might be the only thing you have to chew on for a goodly while. Our
larders are a bit on the empty side—this rebellion of yours has played
hell on food production in every city.”
“Might I have the honor of your name, Captain?”
“Silvar,” he informs her proudly. “Feng Silvar.”
“Thank you. I won’t forget it.”
“You
honor me, Sparrow General. I’ll see about that surgeon for you. We
can’t have you falling out before we’ve had the chance to formally
introduce you to the people of Crache. They’ve heard so much about you,
after all.”
“I hope to live up to my reputation.”
“Few do,” Captain Silvar says, snapping the reins of his mount and galloping away grandly.
When
he’s gone, Evie drops the wineskin to the dirt below, leaving it to rot
under the wheels and hooves of the caravan. It’s a useless gesture, but
it feels good.
Sinking back against the bars, she tries to
ignore the itching and minor agony of her leg, closing her eyes and
sending her mind elsewhere far away.
What remains of her life may be brief and unpleasant, but at least Evie has a new goal.
Before the Crachian machine finally crushes her between its jaws, she will see Captain Feng Silvar dead by her hand.
