I’d written about this web serial a couple of times previously but it seemed only right to give this a proper post of its own now that it’s officially over. Author ErraticErrata (David Verburg) originally intended to complete the series by the sixth book but as with so many other fantasy series underestimated how much more work needed to be done and so had to add on a seventh book. Still it is well and truly done, even if the last volume feels a bit rushed and is rife with typos and unfinished sentences, and the author has embarked on a new writing project. I intend this post to cover the series as a whole, focusing mostly on the last two books, and there will be spoilers for the first few books at least.

I started trying to write a summary of the series but it got way too long. Suffice to say that this is set in a fantasy world where those who excel in some particular niche become superpowered exemplars and are pawns in a struggle between Good and Evil. Protagonist Cathering Foundling is an orphan who is recruited to the evil side and becomes a Villain. But theirs is a practical brand of evil and she really wants to do good for the citizens of her native kingdom of Callow. Over time, she gains a reputation for brutal violence, skullduggery and an ability to an eke out a victory despite impossible odds. She eventually rises to become known as the premier villain of the continent, being crowed not only as the Black Queen of Callow but effectively becoming the leader of all other villainous Named. The series builds up to a final confrontation with the Dead King of Keter, an ancient and god-like necromancer who threatens all life on the continent. So dire is the threat that even the so-called Good nations who warred against her and the Heroes who tried so often to kill her must cooperate with her and eventually rally under her banner.

This is an immensely popular fantasy series and it’s easy to understand why as Catherine makes for such a supremely likable protagonist. Everyone enjoys progression fantasy stories even if they’re a little juvenile and this story ramps up all the way from Catherine being a barmaid in a dive bar to the god-killing leader of a continent-spanning alliance. Though female protagonists are less rare now, it also helps that she breaks the old tropes of the male action hero and is a bisexual who mostly prefers women. But most of all I think is her no-nonsense and practical win-at-all-costs mindset to overcoming obstacles. The iconic scene early in her career is when a hero shows up to challenge her to single battle. The Exiled Prince wears gloriously enchanted armor but disdains a helmet to better show off his good looks. Instead of agreeing to duel him, Catherine simply has her soldiers kill him with their crossbows. Indeed while the Named are fantasy superheroes capable of all kinds of ridiculous feats, throughout the entire series they fight alongside mundane troops as even the Named can’t fight armies by themselves. The combination of large scale battles combined with the Named running around dealing with high-powered fantasy threats makes the action in the series very satisfying to read.

The prose is decently solid, with a practical emphasis on getting plot done and nicely matches its theme. At the same time, there are some more florid touches here and there including blurb that opens each chapter that helps give it a more literary feeling and injects some humor. As usual with web serials, there are interludes from the perspective of other characters to let the reader know what else is happening in the world. But I actually like that this series is sparring in such digressions and actively tries to prevent the story from sprawling out too much. It’s very clear in insisting that the series is largely the story of Catherine Foundling. Combat scenes flow very well and provide an excellent picture of what is going on both on an individual level and on the level of the entire battlefield. As noted, the quality does markedly drop in the very last volume as the author rushed towards the ending. In addition to the writing errors, you get the sense of the writer closing off hanging plot points and character arcs in a deliberate way that is a bit too systematic to feel organic but I suppose that might be what is needed to actually finish these epics.

The series sells itself at first as being about an “evil” protagonist struggling against holier-than-thou heroes. But of course Catherine is actually good even if she is the kind of hero who isn’t above getting her hands dirty, freely acknowledging that she wades across a mountain of corpses to get things done. The only real cogent moral debate is that Catherine insists that principles don’t matter when basic survival itself is in doubt while the heroes retort that if we sacrifice every form of decency and every point of moral principle, what is left of us even if we survive. In practice, Catherine does actually want rules that bind both heroes and villains so by the end the theme, instead of evil versus good, is actually the dawning of an age of order versus the previous age of mythic wonder. That suits me just fine but it also means that Catherine’s much vaunted evilness by the end feels more like an edgy aesthetic than anything else: black armor, cackling crows on her shoulders, a gnarled staff in her hands and so on. As much as I enjoyed this series, it is still a young adult fantasy series that is more about fantasy action than deep philosophical discussion. That said, it is fun to read Catherine’s rejoinders to the White Knight about how it’s easy to be good when you get to grow up amidst privilege.

On another level, this series continues the modern trend of fantasy stories, especially those that appear online, being self-aware and meta. The very premise of there being Named relies on the existence of fantasy archetypes such that the very mention of a Black Knight, complete with capital letters, is enough to evoke all kinds of imagery and some idea of what such a character is expected to be capable of. Monikers like the Bumbling Conjuror and the Wandering Bard are no less vivid. But as the Named become more powerful when they lean into their roles, that they are pawns in a larger story becomes itself part of the story. In the same way, the rules of story-telling treat Heroes and Villains differently. Arguably Catherine’s most powerful skill is being aware of the story and how best to manipulate such threads in her favor. In-universe, she calls this Name-lore but really it amounts to a kind of fourth-wall breaking awareness that the universe she inhabits obeys the rules of story-telling even above the laws of physics and magic. I think I’ve seen this often enough now, mostly recently in Worth the Candle for example, to call this a trend. Nonetheless this usage is still fresh enough that I really enjoy it and marks such writing as being distinctively modern.

All things considered, this truly is an excellent fantasy series with strong characters, a complete, epic storyline and solid writing. I am especially impressed by the expansive and detailed worldbuilding. There is an astonishing variety of peoples and cultures in this world and not just in the lazy way of having the fantasy races be different. The human nations in the world have distinct cultures that feed into their politics and this directly leads to different problems that Catherine and her allies have to solve as they try to unite the many factions. That the different nations have their own military doctrines and force compositions is one of the reasons why this works so great as military fantasy. Finally there are the fantasy dimensions, the multiple hells, the realm of Arcadia, the hints of a more wondrous past and even more epic struggles now forgotten that are the hallmarks of fantasy. It’s a rich world that seems ripe for many more stories even if that of Catherine is done. For now ErraticErrata has started a new fantasy series set in a seemingly completely different world. I’ll wait until more is written to actually start reading but I’m confident that this will be another series that is very successful and very popular.