An intriguing deconstruction of the “modern military vs. fantasy creatures” sub-sub-genre
You’ve probably seen the trope before, as it is a not uncommon theme in military fantasy novels. A military unit from our world has to suddenly deal with supernatural creatures, sometimes in our world, sometimes in another dimension. AR-15 rifles versus dragons. Mortars versus orc fortifications. Cavalry charges against entrenched army units. You know the drill. While it is more common in straight-up military SF, there is a burgeoning military sub-sub-genre in fantasy environments as well.
The authors of The Runes of Engagement tackle this theme in an evolving and even deconstructive way. We layer up the background of the story in the opening and throughout the book to get a sense of how and why and what the scenario is. A picture emerges of a world like ours which suddenly was attacked from another realm. There clearly is an Evil Overlord who decided to expand their domain by opening a front onto our world through magical portals. While the Overlord has been beaten back into his original realm, the costs were high enough that America and other forces have gone across to the other world themselves. Modern military forces on the ground in another dimension, with all the problems that implies.A firebase in a hostile environment, surrounded by enemies, is something armed forces know all about, even if it is in another dimension and the hostiles can do magic.
The actual plot spurs from this point on. Various world governments have forces in the alternate dimension and have been seeking allies and connections to help control the portals to Earth and to take the fight to the Overlord. Our focus is on the members of a Marine unit led by one Staff Sergeant Cale. Cale and his forces have been tasked with bringing an important diplomatic asset, Lady Wiela, a Princess in fact, to the portal to Earth. The goal is to get her to negotiate a treaty to gain her and her Elven realm as an important ally against the mutual Dark Overlord enemy. Needless to say, what seems like a complicated but doable trip in helicopters across a short distance to the portal turns into a much more complicated situation. And as always, it is the ground troops, in this case Cale's soldiers, who have to deal when things go sidewise. And they go so very sidewise, as the Marines have to deal with a radically changed mission, dwindling resources, and fearsome opponents.
Where the authors differ from many books in this subgenre, and make the book more open and more interesting to more mainstream SFF readers, is primarily in the tone, as well as the characters and composition of the army, its allies and associates. These are Marines of a modern mindset and era, rather than the more retrograde armed forces of earlier eras which seem to wrongly display themselves as the default mode of military SF and fantasy.
It’s not only that this is a military more in line with modern sensibilities, but the characters are also genre-aware and the authors make excellent use of that. A major throughline across the book is that the Marines, having grown up with (and in some cases been “forced fed”) fantasy books and movies, are most definitely tuned into genre stereotypes and ideas. No one needs to be explained who Tom Bombadil is, they know a 20 on a roll in D&D is a critical hit, and don’t need to be told that orcs are dangerous.
The fun that the authors have with this is that the fantasy realm that the characters are in only sometimes conforms to Tolkienian stereotypes, and sometimes those stereotypes are thrown right out the window. Trolls, for instance, are very much in the mode of Tolkien: dangerous, potent, but vulnerable to sunlight. On the other hand, Ents are not the friendly Treebeard types you find in The Two Towers. Time and again, the characters, genre-aware as they are, comment on what they are experiencing, especially when they are behind the eight ball.
This places The Runes of Engagement in a recent crop of books that is engaging with, deconstructing, commenting on and thinking on the rise of a general consciousness of epic fantasy tropes, ideas, characters and worldbuilding that has infused the mainstream. It’s coming at that consciousness from a different, military-focused angle (and in a real sense trying to drag that subgenre into the more general flow of SFF), but books such as How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler, or Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan, among others, are part of this bit of genre conversation. The context of that conversation between these books is still being worked out.
However, it is clear that there is a meta-moment of epic fantasy and fantasy in general inside of the genre, and The Runes of Engagement, with its Marines dumped into the deep end of a situation and a world that only sometimes conforms to their expectations (and is deadly dangerous when it does NOT) is part of that meta-moment. Buckell and Klecha, along with Wexler, Brennan and others, have grown up in a world where genre fantasy is a completely and utterly mainstream mode, and thus can reflect on what that means when perceptions of fantasy for characters or a society run up against an actual fantasy world. This is seen both in the large and small details; the latter, for example, as code phrases are lifted from lines of fantasy books; as well as the characters wondering and speculating why this realm aligns, however imperfectly, with Tolkien and other fantasy works.
Beyond this question of metafiction and the novel’s place in that part of the genre conversation, the book is a highly entertaining narrative of a small unit of soldiers put under stricture and having to work their way through it when things go wrong. The research and getting into the mindset of soldiers is a key to really making this novel feel authentic and relatable. As an example, early in the book, as air support for the Marines, a set of A-10 Warthogs show up to help push back the enemy. Any reader of Mil-SF, or more importantly, anyone who has experience with modern combat in the last 50 years on a battlefield can appreciate the presence of the “infantry’s friend” (and then showing how vulnerable they can be on a modern battlefield when not supported properly). The authenticity of the details of the military experience both big and small is presented for fantasy readers as a piece of worldbuilding that is rendered accessible for anyone who has puzzled through a chunky SF or fantasy novel, rather than incomprehensibility meant only for fans of the subgenre.
And it is a relatively lighthearted, at points funny, novel, and intended to be. Sure, Cale and his Marines are in tight spot after tight spot, but the authors leaven their predicaments and their encounters with good doses of humor, sometimes very dry. After all, the title itself is a pun.
The Runes of Engagement works very well for readers who are not immersed in the tropes and expectations of its subgenre, but are cognizant and immersed in the fantasy tropes that have infused popular culture. The novel stems from a short story and comes to a satisfactory conclusion (with some interesting questions raised). I’d read another novel set in this universe.
Highlights:
- Excellent narrative that speaks to the pervasiveness of modern fantasy in culture.
- Good use of military tropes and feel to give authenticity to the soldiers and their plight.
- How useful is a Panzerfaust against a troll, anyway?
Reference: Buckell, Tobias S and Klecha, Dave. The Runes of Engagement [Tachyon, 2024].
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin
