The Malevolent Seven by Sebastian de Castell is an in-your-face, magic filled, grimy adventure with a host of cynical characters (including the protagonist) and a whole lot of gruesome death. Whether you like this one or not will probably boil down to whether or not the humour works for you.

Our hero Cade is a mercenary battle wizard in a world that seems to be in near constant war, with demonic and angelic beings directing things to their own ends. Cade himself secretly gets his spells from a demon, something frowned upon even in the amoral circles of mercenary wizards that he runs in. Things quickly go wrong in his current job, leading him to take on an even more dangerous job with his best friend, having to pick up a posse of five more wizards on the way. The Magnificent Seven connections don’t really go much further past that.

Throughout the book, we have Cade telling us that he’s a pretty terrible guy, even if he’s not as terrible as some of the terrible people he works with, and he’s not overly wrong, even if he has a sense of justice that gets him into trouble and shockingly leads to him trying to do the right thing as the book goes on. If I was supposed to care much about whether or not he’d choose to do the right thing, the book failed on that account – the world is terrible enough in a slightly cartoony way that I couldn’t bring myself to care much what happened to it, or even the characters in it.

There’s a lot of humour here in the characters, setting and narrative, much of it a little dark. It was quite hit and miss for me, but humour is notoriously subjective. The tone at least stays consistent throughout the book. And part of that tone is dark, with many of the characters being incredibly terrible, implied sexual assault of minors being brought up pretty early on in the book as one major example. The protagonist abstains from the worst of these behaviours, but he is far from a saint.

I found the Malevolent Seven to be easy to pick up, with some cool magic, but ultimately lacking in substance. The light tone contrasts a little with the horrible world, and it’s a story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s probably an audience for this book, but I’d hesitate to recommend it unless this sounds like something you’d definitely enjoy.

Rating: 6.5/10

I read an eARC of this book so thank you to Net Galley, the author and the publisher for allowing this.

The Malevolent Seven was everything I hoped it would be. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. We follow Cade, a Wonderist for hire. Wonderist being the book’s version of a mage/wizard. The author has created a fascinating magic system with wonderfully imaginative magic tracks (which are all explained in the acknowledgement section of the book). Cade’s alignment is infernal which has him making deals with diabolics to gain spells. He works with his friend Corrigan who practices storm magic. Some really interesting magical alignments in the characters that make up the seven (and other less prevalent Wonderists).

I loved that Cade and Corrigan are presented as bad guys, and yet even though they essentially kill people for money, their behaviour is far more ethical than the allegedly ‘good’ characters. Perfect use of morally grey characters. Cade is quite disgusted by the decisions and actions of certain characters in positions of power. This book is about investigating and challenging perceptions of good and evil.

This book is quite grim at times but it is in service of the narrative and makes sense for the style of this story. It was equally humorous and disgusting at times. There is some quite dark content that it’s worth checking warnings for. However it was relevant to the story rather than gratuitous.

This felt like a really fun and fresh look at magic, a fascinating group of characters taking on ‘assembling a team to complete a mission’ in a new and tongue in cheek way. Thoroughly enjoyed this!

“There are no noble quests for people like us, Cade!”

Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books for the ARC of The Malevolent Seven by Sebastian de Castell - a wild ride of a read that makes me think of Kings of the Wild meets Prince of Thorns.

Still here? Not convinced yet by that comparison? Cade Ombra is a war mage with great power who is on the run with his best friend, a homicidal thunder mage, to the north in order to complete a job with an excellent pay day. Along the way they will need to assemble a team of some of the most incorrigible, murderous and psychopathic mages to help them.

This book follows the POV of a vile villain, much like Jorg in Prince of Thorns, as they assemble a team to complete a dangerous and murderous mission all the while being side tracked by other little side missions (Ala Kings of the Wild) that explore more about the characters and the grey areas in which they operate. I was pleasantly surprised to get a grimdark fantasy in this book.

I loved this book and its main character Cade. The world building is fantastic and Sebastian has this way of delivering information to you in dribs and drabs. Very few authors can do this effectively opting for the ‘info dump’ chapter rather then letting the world build up around the reader through the process of reading. Sebastian is answering your questions about characters and setting only to then give you a snippet of something greater which will have you asking more and reading more ferociously to the finish line.

If you like irreverent, dark fantasy books full of curses, you'll have a lot of fun with The Malevolent Seven. Longer review to come.

Received arc from Quercus Books and Netgalley for honest read and review,this review is my own.
As you are aware I have read all of Sebastiens books and was so looking forward to this none as well. I was not at all disappointed and I was hooked from the beginning and it did not let up at all.
This centres mostly around Cade and his exploits with a Thunder Mage, a rat mage, a blood mage an angel and a devil, sometimes.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one and it flowed really well with a lot of funny one liners thrown in, for good measure.
These seven are not the good guys, but this only makes the antics better.
Give this a go.

This at first look seems like a fantasy version of ‘the magnificent seven’, but there is so much more involved and at stake. This is really inventive and satisfying fun fantasy; lots of humour and characters who are not heroes, have mercenary tendencies and are out for the payday. But given the right circumstances maybe, just maybe, good will triumph and save the day. It’s not certain, but maybe they even can come out alive! Thank you to Quercus Books and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine.

Reading the first chapter I said to myself: "Oh, this is a fun fantasy", something I was happy about as I was facing a v e r y boring day at work. But, hm, it didn't really continue in that vein. I was quite confused reading it as I felt it was based on something I should have read beforehand but this is - as far as I can gather not a part in a series. It was just awfully heavy on lore.

Not my best reading experience this year thus far.

I think I’ve said before that I hate cliffhanger endings. I loved this book right up until I realised that the last page just dropped me into a hole in the middle of the story. I like Sebastien de Castell, so I will read the next book anyway, but that cliffhanger ending lost this book at least one star. Anyhow… the rest of the book is tight and exciting. It features Cade Ombra, a war mage, or ‘wonderist’, his best friend (friend is a loose term) a homicidal thunder mage and five seemingly random wonderists with an odd assortment of powers: a rat mage, an angelic, a demon, a reluctant blood mage, and Mr Bones, seemingly a small carrion-feeding canine. Circumstances see then heading north to do a job with the promise of a rich reward or an early grave. Cade constantly reminds us that they are not the good guys, but Cade’s secret past hints at other motives.

I loved this book! Told in the author's usual style, the MC speaks directly to the reader, breaking the 4th wall Deadpool style and pre-empting questions. When done well, that's always hilarious and Di Castell really pulls it off. In addition the snarky humour, hilarious scrapes and gritty characters all worked for me. Not in the mood for grimdark but get turned off by noblelight? This book is the perfect and amusing halfway point.

4.5 stars (rounded up)

Fast-paced, adventurous and original, never a dull moment. I raced through this book, it was very hard to put down.

I'd never read any of Sebastien de Castell's books before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I first picked this one up. What I found was fantastically written characters, a compelling narrative style and a plot filled with twists and turns I never saw coming. I will most certainly be checking out his other works after having enjoyed this one so much.

The very beginning of the book threw you right into the action, so it took me a few chapters to get my bearings and understand the characters and the world they were in. Once I did, though, I was enchanted. I loved the way Cade was written and revelled in slowly finding out more about him as the book progressed.

I found the atmosphere of the book to be reminscent of The Lies of Locke Lamora, and I was as delighted by the secrets revealed that I'd managed to guess as I was by the ones that took me completely by surprise. At the end of the book, I was left already wanting more, and I would highly recommend this to any fans of fantasy and morally grey protagonists.

Having never read any of the authors previous books I was unaware of the detail that is applied to the magic and it’s use, I lived the story, I lived the characters, I did not like the magic…. Not to my taste sadly but still a great book

The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de castell
Release date May 11th
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Words cannot describe how much I love this book or how much it wasn’t what I was expecting but it gave me so much more than I wanted. Sebastien is just wordsmith and as he weaves the world you feel even though it is the first book in a maybe series that they are people who you feel you have been with for many books because Sebastien makes characters that make you feel like you know them- each of the messy messed up one of them. There were times in this book where I laughed, there were times I audibly gasped because of what I had just read and there was time where I did not know what was going to happen next and this is something I need in a book. I do not want to know what will happen I want to be able to be surprised with the narrative. If you have loved Sebastien’s other work you will not be disappointed with this because although it is a different series you know that it is Sebastien writing because of the tone and the humour as well as it being unapologetic. I now have to wait until I physically have this book in my hand so I can place it on my Sebastien shelf with the others and then I will wait till the next book comes out from Seb because he is easily an autobuy author. I don’t want to reveal too much about the book because the ride is what make it. But this was an easy 5 stars my end and no doubt no matter what Seb releases next it will too.