{"id":1661,"date":"2009-05-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T23:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2025-01-02T12:02:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T23:02:49","slug":"the-secret-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/05\/02\/the-secret-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>M.F.W Curran<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>MacMillan<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, May 2nd 2009<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>The Secret War<\/em> is a historical fantasy in which the main characters are caught up in a metaphysical battle between Heaven and Hell, and an earthly clash between the Vatican and Count Ordrane of Draak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The first night after the Battle of Waterloo, William Saxon and Kieran Harte should be celebrating their victory.\u00a0 Instead, they find themselves battling a fiery daemon that massacres the French village in which they are staying, killing Kieran\u2019s fianc\u00e9e and burning the settlement to the ground.\u00a0 The only clue to the monster\u2019s origins is a mysterious brass pyramid (the Scarimadean) that William finds in a filthy hovel where the flames seem to have originated.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Slowly and inexorably, the two young soldiers find themselves drawn into a secret war, fighting alongside a militant papal order and the enigmatic, supernatural Dar\u2019 uka, who may or may not be angels. Their mission is to destroy the Scramidaen and protect the Church against the vampiric assassins of Count Ordrane, a fight in which the fate of mankind may be decided\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">As you can probably tell from this summary, the fantasy aspect conforms to a familiar trope with little to set it apart from numerous others in this genre, and it isn\u2019t what you would properly call horror, but it <strong>does<\/strong> work as a fast-paced historical action-adventure. Well written, especially for a first novel, the early 19<sup>th<\/sup>-century setting is realised in a grimy detail, and the battle scenes very graphically described. It&#8217;s not a standout, but a good, solid read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>M.F.W Curran MacMillan Otago Daily Times, May 2nd 2009 The Secret War is a historical fantasy in which the main characters are caught up in a metaphysical battle between Heaven and Hell, and an earthly clash between the Vatican and Count Ordrane of Draak. The first night after the Battle of Waterloo, William Saxon and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[88,370,467,18,407],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-88","tag-fiction","tag-m-f-w-curran","tag-odt","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1662,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/1662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}