7 reasons Chronicles of Rondure is a grimdark fantasy series
Survival makes up grimdark fantasy, and Mina Hirai needs to survive so much that she might just require a few “lives” to stay alive.
I never realized how dark Civil War was until I took it through a review tour. The reviews, while generally four and five stars, didn’t hold back on the trigger warnings. When I read the book again, I thought to myself, “Yep, they’re right.” I also realized that this wasn’t simply a dystopian science fantasy.
Nope, Civil War and the Chronicles of Rondure series are as grimdark as grimdark fantasy can get among contemporary works. While there’s no swearing involved, there’s an overload of everything else on the table. And while the libertarian elements still shine here, this book series is one some of my readers might want to skip over, considering how twisted its plot will get.
Just how crazy do things get in the series?
1 – Mina’s prison experience
After our fearless protagonist, Mina Hirai, is arrested, she’s sent to a maximum security prison for committing treasonous acts. While awaiting trial, Mina’s chained to an outhouse seat in a cell just wide enough to sit in, wearing nothing but a nightgown.
She notes rats make up her only company, and the food is so disgusting that she can’t hold it down. When she’s had enough and vomits some of it up on a prison guard, he strikes her so hard that she ends up with a rather severe concussion.
There’s nothing right about Mina’s time in prison. She’s looked at like some kind of pest, and things get even worse when she meets Carrion, a woman who relishes in physical and psychological torture.
2 – North Korean-like prisons
We don’t know much about prisons in North Korea, but if you have time to read up on them, there’s not a single horror story out there that can match. Wikipedia alone will give you an overview, and even that might be too much for some readers to handle.
Anyway, I used the former Hoeryong concentration camp as the basis for many of the nation of Bastille’s prison colonies. Various methods of intense torture occurred there, plus mass killings of families even if one member of a family attempted to escape.
This is one where I’m keeping things vague, but if you’d like to know more about these prisons, click on the above link and check them out.
3 – Forced body modification
Mina, for one fleeting minute or so, thought Carrion was going to cut off her tongue. Carrion, implied to be a Blood Master in Civil War, the most bloodthirsty of the Elementals, held her sword blade to Mina’s tongue and almost had to hold herself back to stop from slicing it off.
Her tactic was more psychological than physical, but Mina still found herself with battle wounds regardless when Carrion drove a steel-toed boot into her back. But that’s not the worst of it.
Later, we meet a character named Amiya, who doesn’t talk because she, well, can’t. Her tongue had been surgically removed after the Bastillian military deemed her undesirable.
4 – Forced Culling of children with Elemental ability
In Civil War’s prequel, Midnight Raid, Mina’s best friend, Tash, believes she’s the only Elemental who evaded Bastille’s Cull. Culls happen periodically, going after kids as young as toddlers who displayed Elemental ability.
Bastille’s soldiers, recruiters, really, snatch these kids, load them onto military trucks, and relocate them to bases. Here, they’re raised in a structured way in which those they report to “own them.”
They have few freedoms and must engage in combat training daily the second they’re deemed ready. Once they reach a certain threshold in their training, they’re promoted to officers. As for those who fail? Well, they end up like Amiya; tongueless and enslaved to a prominent family that made significant contributions to Bastille, sentenced to a lifetime of labor.
5 – Intense violence and gore
Civil War features intense battle scenes that you’ll find in all my series, but I turn up the juice a little more, diving into deeper descriptions of broken bodies and corpses covered in blood. I initially didn’t go this far, but the book’s subject matter and intensity to this point forced me to change course.
In so many ways, I up the ante in Civil War’s sequel, BattleFront. Oh, and I’ll also say that there’s a dark art involved in these books known as necromancy, as one character knows a thing or two about it.
You may’ve heard of it, and the ritual involves three ingredients: “flesh, blood, and bone.” But don’t worry, I go into deeper detail than J.K. Rowling ever did.
6 – Mature themes
There are hints at different types of slavery here. From the way the main antagonist treats those forced to work under him – think shells of people who were once human – to the fact he abuses his select women in the worst way, Civil War has no shortage of mature themes.
There are also nods to more than just drug usage. It’s more than implied that those in charge force it into their subjects, rendering them unconscious so they can, well, just read the above section again and you can put it all together.
At this point, you may be willing to bet that the books in Chronicles of Rondure go beyond grimdark fantasy. And you may be right.
7 – Paramount vs. the 500 Cities
This one is the absolute worst since it impacts the entire nation and I’ve also implied it holds ramifications on the World of Rondure. Bastille’s capital city, Paramount, functions much like The Capitol in Hunger Games. The place gets almost all the fruits of labor the 500 Cities produces, while the people residing in those same cities are left with scraps.
Civil War is not the first book in the Renegades Epic that depicts this. Instead, Wind Master (Elementals of Nordica: Book II) is where we first see this when Sion Zona and his cousin, Hannah Kakko, run into Tash.
Sion and Hannah see firsthand just how bad the city’s conditions are, and Tash gives them a quick rundown. After Sion explains the situation and that he and Hannah need to rescue Timo, Tash joins them. But that’s just an overview. If you’d like to go in more depth on the 500 Cities, check out Civil War.
