U.S.S. Night Angel, Supplemental

This text is supplemental material to Teddy Kulp’s Utterly Serious Stuff episode, U.S.S. Night Angel, which can be found here.

I know I’ve already said it, but this book series is good; however, when I said that the imagery can get disturbing, I meant that too. The main character of the series is a Wetboy, which is to an assassin what Picasso is to a house painter, but even the noble paragons of virtue in the story are reduced to some heinous acts at times in the story.

Without, hopefully, giving too much away, I’d like to point out that these books include, in no particular order: cannibalism, rape, gruesome murders, human abominations, people being used as furniture. Again, though, if you can make it though such things, these books are well worth it and none of it is used for any sort of shock value but is integral to the story.

Getting past all that, there’s another thing I want to talk about with this book series. Soon after I read them, Dragon Age: Origins came out and I got and played it. I bring this up because I found certain similarities in the two stories.

This next section contains spoilers for both works, so Snape Alert on it.

Does any of this sound familiar? The story takes place in a small nation that only recently gained its freedom from its powerful neighbors. The city’s capital and largest city is a walled, segregated city with the noble’s quarters separated by a natural feature of the land. The main character’s close companion is the rightful king, but is usurped by a treacherous woman. It is suggested that he and the woman marry to prevent a civil war in the middle of a larger war. People who display magical talent are taken off to be trained in a Mage tower. There is an order of Paladins who use their special skills and powers to hunt and fight mages not of the towers. There is a powerful alternate source of magic that is more potent, but also corruptive and seen as evil. There are warriors from a distant land who have a highly regimented and segregated society whose men have braided hair and are identified by their sword, which is their soul. There is an evil force being fought made of magically corrupted beings that were once human that advance it tier and size based on numbers culminating in what is essentially a fallen god.

I know that some of those are fairly common fantasy fare, but when you look at the list as a whole, it does get to be quite long. I’m really not sure what to make of it, but I thought I’d point it out to the no one who reads these.