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The Malevolent Seven  By  cover art

The Malevolent Seven

By: Sebastien de Castell
Narrated by: Joe Jameson
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Publisher's summary

From the bestselling author of THE GREATCOATS and SPELLSLINGER: seven war mages with dark pasts and special powers must come together to fight an unknown enemy—but the stakes are higher than anyone can imagine . . . and someone's setting them up for a fall.

'Seven powerful mages want to make the world a better place. We're going to kill them first.'

Picture a wizard. Go ahead, close your eyes. There he is, see? Skinny old guy with a long straggly beard. No doubt he's wearing iridescent silk robes that couldn't protect his frail body from a light breeze. The hat's a must, too, right? Big, floppy thing, covered in esoteric symbols that would instantly show every other mage where this one gets his magic? Wouldn't want a simple steel helmet or something that might, you know, protect the part of him most needed for conjuring magical forces from being bashed in with a mace (or pretty much any household object).

Now open your eyes and let me show you what a real war mage looks like . . . but be warned: you're probably not going to like it, because we're violent, angry, dangerously broken people who sell our skills to the highest bidder and be damned to any moral or ethical considerations.

At least, until such irritating concepts as friendship and the end of the world get in the way.

My name is Cade Ombra, and though I currently make my living as a mercenary wonderist, I used to have a far more noble-sounding job title—until I discovered the people I worked for weren't quite as noble as I'd believed. Now I'm on the run and my only friend, a homicidal thunder mage, has invited me to join him on a suicide mission against the seven deadliest mages on the continent.

Time to recruit some very bad people to help us on this job . . .

©2023 Sebastien de Castell (P)2023 Quercus Editions Limited

What listeners say about The Malevolent Seven

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Wandered off the promised path

“When I mentioned earlier that we were friends, I was using the term loosely;
we were more like acquaintances who appreciated each other’s jokes.”
The beginning started off as a five star Bronn-worthy tale of mage mercenaries with no foox to give becoming reluctant heroes. Amid a fair number of F bombs, we get introduced to some unique magics and bawdy, bloody banter between Cade and thunder mage (my favorite character by far). There’s a fantastic Reservoir Dogs action sequence that had me primed for a bollicking vicious ride.

“Life is a river of filth.”
Unfortunately, after the first two hours, this book gets lost in nine hours of wandering about, slowly and aimlessly adding less interesting members to the team. There’s little action or magic as the story gets tangled in spiritual quandaries, Faustian bargains and an angels&devils aesthetic that had me thinking this should have been titled The Manipulated Seven because there’s not much malevolence until the end. The last hour finally delivers some action and magic, but the way things worked was muddled and underwhelming.

“Brothels are tremendously profitable enterprises… selling someone else’s body for a night
almost always earns you more coin than it costs you to keep them fed and clothed.
This is especially true when clothing is optional.”
Also, there’s a brothel-fixation … or rather the theme of innocents getting sexually abused features prominently. There’s no actual sex scenes, but the vibe was bad enough. I wanted backstabbing, and banter, and blowing things up with lightning and spells. I only got that at the very beginning and end. Nonetheless, I would still be willing to purchase a book 2, on sale, in the hopes of improvement.

In the meantime, when I’m in the mood for a fantasy version of the Seven Samurai,
I’ll re-listen to the Maleficent Seven, by Cameron Johnston.

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4 people found this helpful

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Great listen!

De Castell can sure write a “Hero” you want to root for. Even if that Hero is… anti. If you liked this you will love the Great Coats series.

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3 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Good tale of antiheroes

What I enjoyed: heavy magic, plenty of snark and voice, the worldbuilding was sufficient and not self-indulgent. I like my prose closer to purple/lyrical, but that’s just me.

Check this out if you like The Maleficent Seven by Cameron Johnston, The Suicide Squad movie, dnd-esque stories, The BlackTongue Thief, and any other stories that are—to steal Buhelman’s phrase—GRINdark.

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3.5 Stars 🌟

This was a "new to me" author that I came across after reading the summary for this book. The writing style was unique and took me a little while to get used to, but when it seemed to smooth out, the story took off.

This is a kind of dark humor type story. There is a motley crew put together to go on a sort of quest. The nonstop banter is actually funny, and the self-deprecation of the main male MC is at times too funny. He has the hardest time being happy because he is constantly telling himself and others how bad he is.

There is a bit of a philosophical quandary in this book - are you always ALL bad or ALL good? Or can there be levels of each?

We follow along with Cade and begin to slowly learn exactly WHY he chose his newest profession and WHY there are people after him. And yes, he just accepted a job to do the thing that he dislikes more than anything, yet it is his profession and it is a job.

I loved all of the secondary characters especially once everyone got together. Fun story, interesting world and exciting quest.

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Fast-Paced Punch To The Face

You get dropped right into the middle of (spoiler-ish) and don’t look back as author Sebastien de Castell delivers a fun, action-pack story in The Malevolent Seven. The character development grows with each page. The reasons why are revealed in a way that suits the characters and rightly moves to story forward.

The twists and turns come at you at the right moments. And the end, well it was certainly not what I guessed. It was better.

Narrator Joe Jameson did a fantastic job. Masterful in bringing the story to life! Certainly considering in re-listening to it again. DRmz 04-26-2023

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Book of prologue

I LOVE de Castell and I love Joe Jameson’s narration. When teamed together, these guys just cannot disappoint.
Listening to the first few (DARK) chapters of Malevolent 7, I was unsure I would like this one. But by the end, Sebastian de Castell pulled it together!
I get the sense that this book was setting up the characters for epic character growth. Not growth into “good guys”, but into who they need to be to get the job done. I ended up liking their broken camaraderie and defects. No one can write an imperfect, flawed human like de Castell!

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Great story

Darkly funny with a great story and memorable characters. Looking forward to the continued adventures of Cade

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  • Overall
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Quite enjoyable

I am definitely reading the next one. Narrator was perfect. Story is actually fun too.

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WOW!!! Just WOW!!

The intellectual, and sometimes questionable mortality of this story and its characters had so much depth that I never saw the bottom coming. The Narrator did a phenomenal job of differentiation between characters and conveyed the emotional cadences perfectly. I was laughing, and feeling every " Oh shit" and "that's messed up" moment of the story. 👍👍👍😆

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This was really enjoyable

I really like urban fantasy or dark fantasy. I like high fantasy too, but the kind of stories where the good guys aren’t exactly all that good really appeal to me. This one’s like that. Well crafted, well written, and I didn’t have very high expectations when I got it, so it was all the more enjoyable. If I had one thing to nitpick, I would have made the chapters longer. Story still flows the way it’s written, but longer chapters would’ve been nice. Narration was amazing. I am definitely picking up the next book in the series. 

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