Unseen Shadows - Forgotten Warriors by Barry Nugent
Publisher – Batten Press
Published – Out Now
Price - £11.99 paperback £2.31 Kindle ebook
Hold your breath. Stand your ground. The worst is yet to come.
Three years ago, on the eve of their greatest triumph, the Book of Cademus suffered their greatest defeat.
Today the leaders of this apocalyptic cult are hunted across the globe as their followers lose faith in their gods.
Reduced to striking out from the shadows in petty acts of vengeance, the cult hatches one last desperate gambit to regain all they have lost.
The Icarus Foundation, ignorant of the danger, has become locked in a political power struggle. The United Nations believes Icarus are too dangerous to be left unchecked and take drastic measures to bring them under control.
With Icarus’ focus turned elsewhere the burden falls on those scarred survivors to stand against the Book of Cademus once more. If they can…
NB some spoilers for the first book in the Unseen Shadows books will follow
Waiting for the next book in a series can be painful especially when the first one was so good; especially when you realise that you’d missed this one being announced. The good news is I finally have found out what happened next and it was indeed worth the wait. In Forgotten Warriors by Barry Nugent this modern fantasy thriller raises the stakes, wrongfoots the reader and put everything on the line and then a bit more.
It has been three years since the ending of Fallen Heroes and many of the surviving characters are trying to put their lives back together. Jason Chen who was the centre of events last time has joined the paranormal secret organisation known as Icarus to continue to explore how to take down the evil Knights of Cadmus who are regrouping under new and ambitious leadership. Vincent Marconi mourns the loss of his mentor Napoleon Stone by both drinking himself to oblivion and mercilessly killing any Cadmus group he can get his hands on. Most startling we find Steph Connisbee now working reluctantly for the UN organisation known as TORCH serving alongside the traitorous Phillippe Chardon. Jason has a mission go seriously wrong on him losing a friend and partner and this triggers a wave of organisations across the globe joining forces unwillingly to find a source of huge power. Behind the scenes though a new player is about to make their entry onto the stage and really upset the world order.
Yeah, I admit I am going to be a bit coy on the plot here and for that dear reader I regret nothing. This is a sequel and what I really liked about it was Nugent use the three-year gap between the stories to really evolve the characters. They are fundamentally the same heroes and villains from the last novel, but they’ve moved in different directions. Jason is now no longer the naïve student but a promising and slightly rebellious agent himself now happy to put things on the line for the greater good. The bigger surprises were seeing Vincent completely lose himself in revenge being previously the more moral character in the tale; and I loved how one of my favourite characters Steph is now less a good right hand woman and more a leader in her own right. I liked in particular how Nugent puts her in the leadership role having to deal with those above and below her rank. Still sarcastic, strong-willed and deadly but now having to deal with the bigger picture and being more strategic. I wish more series focused on how people can change over time. We also get a great female agent double act of Eve and Kathryn two uneasy heavily rained operatives having to learn to work together to both stay alive and find the traitors for the previous novel. I loved how this ia novel of very competent professionals working out how to deal with the unknown. It’s a lot more fun seeing professionals having to adapt to the weird than constant infodumps to newbies and that really sings throughout the novel.
The plot in some ways is very familiar the world is under threat, but Nugent adds some new dimensions to it. Some villains may be seen in a new light; there is a really interesting revelation that makes you look at the first story’s plot with new eyes and Nugent fires into the plot some delicious reveals that I was not expecting. It feels more confident than the first novel and happy to play with the reader’s expectations. What definitely is kept is the high level of action sequences in the story – we have fist fights, gun fights and later on army versus army fights. There is a wonderful sense of flow and poise that is fairly rare in novels and you can see each fight has a cost as people tire and get injured. A small thing but quite important for keeping the sense that this is a real universe and not a shallow fictional one.
I gobbled this up in a day and it really was exactly what I needed. A powerful supernatural adventure thriller with a vast cast of characters, global locations, and revelations to explore. I loved how this built on the first novel but also underlined that each character has their own back story and the world has its own secret history which the plot mines. Again, this reminds me of the Sigma Force novels by James Rollins which matches actions, history, and some very fun characters. Is there a happy ending yet? There is one that will make the wait for the next book just as painful but at the same time a great story in its own right. Highly recommended!
