Just glorious fun. A roller coaster ride filled with gods, demons, vampires and all types of monsters! If you’d read Cam’s Age of Tyranny duology and thought that was great, he really upped the bar and this will will shatter even your wild expectations.

Writing/Plot/Pace: +9/10

“Seven bloodthirsty monsters. One town. Their last hope” The blurb captures the book perfectly.

What happens if worlds saviors are just a bunch of villain’s who are as despicable as (if not more) the enemy they are rescuing you from? What would we do in a situation we continue to hope for the protagonists (or perhaps non-antagonists might be better considering they are villains themselves) to emerge victorious all the while despising them? it certainly is a very interesting conundrum. It is a story of Necromancers, Vampires, Demons, Mad Scientist (Alchemist), Sea Monsters, Gods, Dukes of Hell, Holy Knights…it just has everything. Both in scope and variation the character diversity is just astounding!

What makes this different from the other takes of the classic Seven Samurai is the makeup and interpersonal relationship (or lack of one) between the main characters. it is not a tale of hope of redemption or glorified heroism. The MCs are evil, they hate working together, they plot against each other, they lack sympathy and/or empathy, they are selfish to a fault and ruthless to burh the world to get what they want. Definitely not a likeable group, I’d invite for a drink. The dynamics between them is something I especially enjoyed all through my read.

Staying true to the title, the books moves deftly between about multiple PoVs (You have 7 protagonists, 1 antagonist plus couple of others secondary characters) without being confusing even in the slightest. The way the plot weaves between the characters themselves, their intentions, their interactions and the plot is done smoothly that the oft encountered info dumps are totally absent.

The book just drops you at the beginning of a battle and the pace never drops till the climax. Pacing is perfect as we get adrenalin action sequences to blood chilling battle scenes, gritty drama all blended into one great story. The book has abundance of violent scenes, however they are done well without moving into the cheap gore category. The casual callousness shown towards pain, suffering and cruelty permeates every page which should be expected considering that both the antagonist and the non-antagonists are both big time villains. But despite the content, the book always has the feel of gritty adventure rather than a pure grimdark book, which I absolutely loved.

What I wanted more was more of macro worldbuilding. The books focuses on events near the village of Tarnbrooke. We only sneak peeks into macro world and this focused approach’s which works well with the plot but a bit more on macro worldbuilding might have added more oomph to the actually world shattering events happening here.

And as a cherry on top, it has a nice twist at the end that I desperately hope will lead to the next book in this world.

Characters: +9/10

Portraying a villain as a heroic role without actually making them a hero is a delicate balance to achieve and Cam has done s stellar role here. Every instance where we focus on the character, I hated their actions, but when they are fighting the antagonist, I wanted them to win. Deliciously balanced characters!

What sets this book apart is that every single character makes an impression. From the protagonists to the side character of Red Penny, they all have weight and importance to the story left an impression on me. They all have individual personalities and in hindsight I’m amazed at how much I swung from hating their character, to wanting them to win and then willing them to die once victory is achieved. I don’t think my words capture those mood swings well…but it’s something you have to experience on your own.

If you threatened to feed me to the demons, unless I nitpick something….then I’d have to say I expected a bit more oomph from Black Herran. Climax apart, I felt the rest of characters had more spotlight than her and I would have loved to see more of her (Hint to Cam: Just write the next damn book quickly please!)

I kindly received a copy of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The idea that the world can only be saved by 7 villains is great. The characters were so rich and in some cases were in that grey zone of 'are they truly evil?!' I loved the vampire and god of war.

The magic system and world were really easy to understand and imagine. The descriptions of the battles were really good too.

I liked how realistic the book was - no shying away from atrocities even including women and children. It made it so much crueler and believable.

There was great twists in the book that will hopefully set it up for a sequel.

Great read!!

The Maleficent Seven promises madness, and that’s what it delivers. Lots of it. If you like watching bad guys doing bad things in the service of good, here’s your next fix. 

Black Herran, a powerful demonologist and fearsome general, sold her soul for power. Instead of sealing the deal, she abandoned her armies at the cusp of victory and disappeared. Forty years later, she needs to reassemble her generals to stop a new threat, the Lucent Empire and its holy knights, from invading her hometown. 

The problem? Her old comrades hate each other and Black Herran most of all. The first part of the book follows the reassembly of the team and is wildly entertaining. The team includes Maeven (a devious necromancer), Lorrimer Felle (a posh vampire with a penchant for mayhem and violence), Tiarnach (god of war turned drunkard), the pirate Queen Verena Awildan, Amogg (unstoppable orc), and Jerak Hyden (mad alchemist who terrifies everyone). They agree to join forces against common foe, but it’s clear they’ll play their own games, too.

The second part of the book gets even more over-the-top, as the team assembles in Tarnbrook and deals with armies of the Lucent Empire. There're no heroes in The Maleficent Seven; only monsters doing monstrous things to stop other monsters. If you don’t like inappropriate humour mixed with gore, you probably won’t appreciate the story. If, however, madness appeals to you, Johnston will entertain you in a loud and violent way.

The story develops at a breakneck pace and rarely pauses. Cameron Johnston excels at two things; characters and action scenes. While I wouldn’t call any of the characters real (they’re too over-the-top in every way), I found them memorable and distinct. The action scenes provide everything action-hungry readers can imagine (magic, demons, sword and ax fights, explosions, mayhem) and more! Because the story is told from an omniscient point of view, we learn a bit about everyone but without getting to know anyone intimately. A brave choice but it (mostly) works.

Readers tired with slow-moving, over-written, exposition-fraught epics will find lots to enjoy here. It’s not life-changing, but it’s wildly entertaining and addictive to read.

3,5 *

This. Was. Fun.

Bare bones: Black Herran, the infamous general with a power to summon demons from depths of hell, had a change of mind about the whole ruling-the-world thing in the eve of the final battle and left her army without a word. Forty years later, she calls in her ex-First Lieutenant, necromancer Maeve, with a task to assemble her former captains: a vampire lord, a pirate queen, an ex-god of war, an orc chieftain and a mad alchemist in order to make a stand in the small village against the spreading Empire of religious fanatics.

The Maleficent Seven, just like The Magnificent Seven, just like the original Seven Samurai is a very linear story: first act is assembling the former team one by one, the second act is them strategising how will they defend the village, finally leading to a third act and an epic culmination. The twist here is, of course, that they are monsters.
But what is it really that makes this story so appealing? Why is it recreated so often in many different ways? I kept thinking about this as I was reading because Cameron Johnston did something interesting: you are absolutely never in the doubt that these Seven are monsters. All of them are genre-recognizable creatures of dark and in most cases we got to see them in the role of antagonists. Johnston is leaning heavily on all those familiar traits that makes them scary and he is showing them in all their glory. And yet, you are on their side. The guys they are fighting against are holy knights, with swords of godly flame, sticklers for propriety and honour, but you pump your fist in the air when a giant orc smashes their heads. This is because the true appeal of this premise is not really the camaraderie nor the heroism- it's that we simply love rooting for the underdog. You, as a reader is on the side of monsters because odds are not in their favour. That premise makes for a good story, but in fantasy setting where rules of physics don't apply and there is magic? It's epic. It's over the top. It's on steroids and just plain fun.

Because of who they are, Black Herran and her captains are interesting characters to read about, both in their pov sections and in their interactions. They are monsters so their reasons for risking their lives in this fight are entirely selfish and self serving and all of them have some side-plan. When it comes to their powers, I'd say they are for most part archetypical depictions of their monster so you can expect them doing bloody, brutal and cruel things. Adding a bit to already known concepts and giving each of the captains distinct personalities managed to make this book work, because it clicked for me only when they started interacting. I really liked Lorimer (a terrifying single-vampire solution to almost every problem), Verena (queen to the bone), Amogg Haddak (orc culture in general was fun) and Tiernach (foul-mouthed god, vampire antagonizer and shit stirrer). If I would take issue with anything it's that I finished the book knowing the least about Black Herran. Secrecy is definitely part of her appeal, but I don't think her and Maeve, or the villain were as well rounded characters as others.

This is pretty straightforward, fast paced and easy read. Pitched as Magnificent Seven meets Suicide Squad, I'd say it gives just as much fun, camp and blood. :)

After reading the author's "Age of Tyranny" duo-logy I was really excited to hear he had another book coming up. Given the opportunity to read the ARC, it was an exciting to see a whole new world, along similar lines to Nicholas Eame's "the Band series", with even a dash of "The Heroes" from Joe Abercrombie.

The Maleficent 7, the dread Demonologist Black Herran and her 6 Captains, reunited after 40 years to help stop a terrifying Crusade. It was a fun angle to have the "bad guys" as the ones stopping the "do-gooders". The brief glimpses of the "Good guys" provided a fresh take on the fantasy trope, that those with God may not be entirely right....and which God?

I do think the author could have dived into Black Herran's story more (my reduction from 5 stars to 4), but all the Captain's characters all felt really fleshed out, with some very awesome back stories. The Twisted Alchemist felt a lot like Joe Abercrombie's Morveer from Best Served Cold, while the "Demigod" was by and far my favorite POV.

Buy this book! It was a journey I couldn't put down.

I already had a copy of this on pre-order when I was able to get my hands on the digital ARC.

This book lived up to all the expectations I had for it. A fun team assembly ala ‘Kings of the Wyld’, along with an equally loveable much of characters. My favourite, as much as one can have a favourite out of this crop of horrible people, would have to be the Vampire Lord of Felle’s Reach or the one time Demi God of War. It was a joy to see how these characters interact with one another 30 years after a failed campaign. Their hatred for each other is matched only by their hatred for the enemy, the Falcon Prince, whose own acts of evil make the Maleficent Sevens look small.

I loved this Akira Kurosawa inspired fantasy and hope to see Cameron return to this world especially after such a fantastic conclusion to the book!

I think I'm going to go against the grain on this one, unfortunately. I just don't think it was for me, but I do think a lot of people are going to really enjoy it.

From the title, you can see that there are seven main characters. They are all bad guys, sort of fighting for a good cause, but mostly for their own selfish reasons. I like grimdark books, but I felt that the characters were extremes of everything. The worst of the stereotypes with little in the way of redeeming qualities to make you connect to them. The only slight exceptions to this was maybe Lorimer or Tiarnach who seemed to have a bit more personality, but there was littler overall character development. They remained shallow throughout so that you didn't really get to know them.

The first part of the book follows the necromancer, Maeven, as she gathers the others together. It seems kind of pointless and we just see how much they hate each other. We know they have to get together or there would be no point to the book, so it just seems like filler to me.

There is a lot of fighting and action throughout, violently described, overdone in a lot of places with people constantly eating body parts. Again, I'm not squeamish, but this seems to be done more for shock value than any real attempt to advance the plot.

Overall, not my thing and I would think it would be better suited to television or film than a book (not often you would find me saying something like that), but for me, it just didn't work as a book.

This book is crass, violent, unpredictable and one crazy adventure and I loved every page. The basic premise is 7 b*stards begrudgingly come together to fight a bigger b*stard; a demonologist, a necromancer, a vampire, a pirate queen, an orc, a god and an alchemist, all with their own vengeance for each other and it’s as wild as it sounds. No character is inherently good, in fact what they do on the page is pretty dark at times, and yet the banter between them, particularly between the blunt Amogg the orc and the drunk Tiarnach the washed up god, or the hatred between Maeven the necromancer and vampire Lorimer, it’s so entertaining! This is an unforgiving book, a lot happens, there are a lot of characters and it darts about so don’t read it for a relaxing time!!

This book won’t be for everyone, for some perhaps the tone won’t connect, but if you enjoyed the unashamed bluntness of Kristoff’s Nevernight and his casual reference to bodily fluids straight from the start, you’re going to enjoy Johnston’s writing. The language is blue, the characters are morally grey and that’s when they’re behaving, the pace is pretty constant and while usually I’ve struggled with a book where I haven’t liked or agreed with a protagonist, somehow you love, or at the very least like, these terrible people, you really find yourself rooting for this lot (apart from Jerak, Jerak is a ****).

Thank you NetGalley for the early copy to review, I needed the laughs and uninhibited escape.

Strong new voice (at least I think it is) in the fantasy world. This was full of action with strong characters and a very interesting plot. The world was great and overall this book had some sort or originality or creativity to it that pleased me a lot. I loved what this publisher doing, bringing good new author to the game and always with some sort of touch that make them stand out of the mass. I recommend it!

This grew on me as I read it. It was considerably more bloody than I usually care for and the best of the seven were vile beings but the story is so well written they grow on you, I’m not familiar with the Seven Samurais or Magnificent Seven stories beyond knowing they exist so I can’t say how good of a retelling this book is. I can say 5he characters and their motivations were well fleshed out and the pace of the story was relentlessly so as you wade through the gore you will never be bored!

Let me start by saying that if you enjoy superhero/action movies or anime then you will enjoy this book too. So this book did a lot of things that I didn’t like. But it’s not an objectively bad book. It just wasn’t for me and I think others might enjoy it. As it is obvious from the title, the story revolves around seven characters. Black Harren is the chief and she is trying to gather her old crew for a big battle. The characters are either supernatural (vampire, demi-God, Orc, Necromancer) or criminals and pirates. In summary, your protagonists are bad guys but they’re fighting for a good cause. It’s kind of similar to the Fast & Furious movies, which brings me to my biggest problem with the book.

Pacing: This book is unbelievably fast-paced. It felt like a movie, not a book. And yeah it felt exactly like Fast & Furious or a Marvel movie! why? Because it took only two or three pages for these people to travel from point A to point B in this universe! As someone who loves WoT and Asoiaf, I would rather see the journey, I would like to see 300 pages of just walking around in the universe. And don’t get me wrong, I love those fast-paced movies, it works in visual media but not in books. On the other hand, I know that most people actually enjoy a fast-paced story and find the pacing in WoT and Asoiaf too slow. So if you’re one of them then I recommend this book.

Tone: This book is a fun adventure, not an epic story of politics and wars. Yes, the world is dark, brutal, and full of bloodshed but there is also humor there and in my opinion, the humor was more prevalent. Of course, the whole point of the story is one major battle but it felt like a battle between Avengers and Thanos, not the kind of battle that I expect to see in fantasy worlds. And again, I know that lots of you will probably love this kind of story but it wasn’t for me. The first section of the book is just the Necromancer collecting the crew from different parts of the world and all of them start by saying “No I don’t wanna come back and work for Black Herran” but come on! we all know that they’re eventually gonna accept the offer, otherwise, there wouldn’t be a story! So the whole thing was a little pointless for me. And again, this could work in movies, because every member is just gonna protest for two minutes and you can watch two pointless minutes but I get bored reading 12 pointless chapters! These chapters were mostly characters telling jokes or being badass or insulting each other by being witty. Their dialogues are actually fun and I’m sure a lot of you will enjoy it.

world-building: I can’t say there is anything objectively wrong with this universe because there isn’t but for me, this universe is too crowded! There are Orcs, there are Vampires, Necromancers, some huge insects or something, demons,... None of them are explored enough for my taste, I like to know every single detail about every single race in books! But then again, I know most people enjoy this kind of story.

Wow, this whole review is just me saying this book isn’t for me, but it might be for you:D

This book was pure entertainment and I think it is a good position for anyone who likes not ever grey morality in characters but simply them being bad. The story was fine, I enjoyed it, and though, nothing special, the novel was something good for lazy evenings. What I miss what the protagonist, who, despite him or her being a bad person, I would actually like and really root for. They were all interesting creatures, but not one of them really caught my heart.

There are some gore scenes so the book is not for a soft-hearted, but if you don't mind blood and death, and you like fantasy with villains as main characters, you should read this book, I liked it.

The Maleficent Seven was not quite what I expected but I still enjoyed it a lot. I was expecting something with a little more humour and, while it was definitely there, it was darker than I was expecting.

What I did find was a rather brutal, often violent and sometimes disgusting (I mean that in the there’s lots of blood and guts sense, not I was offended by what in was reading way). The characters are not particularly nice people and they all seem to be enemies with each other but they are forced to work together to stop a religious zealot.

The story was interesting enough. It’s fast paced and self-contained so you get a complete story that doesn’t drag on and outstay its welcome. There’s a couple of nice twists and turns throughout the story to keep you interested. It was a lot more grimdark than I had anticipated before reading the book so there’s that to bear in mind if that’s not something you’re into. I very much enjoyed it, though.

I think that the characters are very strong and they all manage to feel like separate and distinct people, which is a pretty good feat when you’re dealing with seven major characters and a handful of secondary characters. Black Herran is interesting enough, she didn’t take the path of most bloodthirsty protagonists and gave up the fight at the beginning of the book, then spent forty years incognito before having to take up her battle again. My favourite character, however, was Lorimer, a vampire who is trying to reclaim his lands. He gets some pretty good lines and I liked how badass he was.

The rest of the characters were entertaining enough but Jerak, a mad alchemist who likes experimenting on people, made my skin crawl quite a bit. He’s introduced as someone who no-one really wants to be around and I can see why: he’s horrifying. Maeven, I couldn’t decide if I liked or disliked. She was a kickass character but a bit too backstabby for my liking in a character.

On the whole, I did enjoy The Maleficent Seven. The story was well plotted and paced and the characters carried the story well. It was darker than I was expecting but I still liked it a lot.

This is, unsurprisingly, a retelling of *The Magnificent Seven,* which is itself a retelling of *The Seven Samurai*. There's a good reason the story has been told so many times: "group of heavily outnumbered but highly skilled warriors defends village from invading force" will always be a great premise for a story.

The twist here is that the titular seven are all dyed-in-the-wool villains. They consist of a demon raiser, a necromancer, a vampire, a pirate queen, a war god, an alchemist, and an orc chieftain. They're all bad people (though some are worse than the others - the other six all uncomfortable to be working alongside the alchemist), and they're all their for their own selfish reasons, but they all intend to do their best to save the inoffensive village with the bad luck to sit in the path of a fanatical theocratic empire.

The story that unfolds is pure popcorn fun. Not only do you get the fun of seeing what clever tricks/horrifying crimes they do to stop the invaders, at the same time all seven are plotting against the other and looking for the right moment to both defeat the invaders and come out on top of their allies.

This isn't a book that'll change your life, but it's very much a book worth the read if what you are looking for is entertainment. And even though none of the seven are good guys, you still have reasons to root for most of them.

Props to the author for a good gender balance. The demon raiser, necromancer, pirate queen, and orc chieftain are all women. The orc in particular, upon arriving at the village, asks first thing why the stupid humans are only training half of the people as fighters and immediately sets to training the women. The captain of the militia women (Penny, later dubbed "Red Penny") is one of the few side characters and by far my favorite.

Warning for graphic violence (these are very bad people) and violence against animals (again, bad people). No rape, though, which was a relief.

Comes out on August 10. Thanks to Angry Robot for the ARC.

The premise of this book is so insanely cool, I smiled when I read it. For the first few chapters I was worried that I wouldn't be on board with the authors writing style. However it soon started to click and I found myself loving this book and it's villains. The author does something profound. He makes us care for monsters that have slaughtered thousands, without making them soften over time. Sure we learn more about our characters and their motivations but they still start the book as monsters and end the book as monsters. 5 out of 5.

Unfortunately I was expecting this to be a lot more comedic than it was; at least from what I read, it seems to be much more grimdark instead. Which doesn't make it a bad book! I'm just not the right reader for it.

I have read Cameron Johnston’s previous books and thought I had a good idea of what this book would be like… I was wrong! This is by far his best, it’s absolutely bloody brilliant, There are no redeemable characters (not really) although my sympathy lies with the God of Courage 😉 but I didn’t care, no spoilers but the ending does leave room for further books in this insane universe and I would really like to read more about please!

I requested this one to see if I was interested enough to request a review copy because I'm trying to only request books I'm very likely to give 4 or 5 stars. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book is not my tastes. It's actually quite a interesting story, but I have very particular tastes in SFF so I know I could only give this one an average review.