Bitter Seeds

It is often said that a story can only have one big "lie." But every rule must have exceptions. In his first novel, Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis successfully pits one big lie against another: the outcome of an alternate World War 2 is to be decided by the struggle between the British warlocks and the Nazi supermen.

During the Spanish Civil War, a British secret agent Raybould Marsh is sent to Spain to meet a Nazi defector. But the latter spontaneously erupts into flames, burning to death, and the top-secret documents and film that he has not had time to properly deliver are severely damaged. Later, Marsh meets a young German woman in a harbor, who seems to know him--and she has wires sticking out of her head.

As it turns out, the Germans secretly deployed a team of supermen, using Spain as their training ground. One can fly, another superman can make things burst into flames, one superwoman can turn invisible. An imbecile on a leash can smash things by telekinesis. In order to oppose this, the British turn to a secretive cabal of warlocks.

At first, they think that the German supermen use the same magic in another guise. But they soon discover this is not the case. The supermen are the so-called "Doctor von Westarp's children"--the very few that have miraculously lived through the "good doctor's" experiments. Although the "willenkrafte" (willpower) they use is ill-defined, this comes across as a species of science. Whereas the warlocks use magic--another the book's many polarities.

This magic is powerful, but it is not without a price. Indeed, everyone must pay a price in the story, the von-Westarp's children and the British alike. For the warlocks, this takes the form of "blood price." The Eidolons, the demon-like beings, hate humans with passion and would like nothing better than to erase the humanity entirely from existence. The more the warlocks ask of them, the higher is the price--in blood, at first; but then, in lives. In many lives.

There is a point in the story when neither side is sympathetic; thankfully, it's brief. The slide down the "getting worse before it begins getting better" slope is handled masterfully. The character development arc of another POV character, William Beauclerk, is especially poignant.

Will (interestingly, usually referred to by his nickname in the story, whereas Marsh is called by his last name) is a liaison between the British secret service and the warlocks, and a beginning warlock in his own right. The story begins with him as a witty and gregarious teetotaler, easy to like. Toward the end, the Eidolons' demands of mass killings of his own people drive him almost to the brink of ruin.

On the other side, the Nazi too have likable characters. The third POV in the book belongs to Klaus, one of the supermen. He is a half-Gipsy, and therefore not very much liked by the Nazi (although tolerated for his usefulness). His particular skill is the ability to become incorporeal, going unscathed through walls or through a hail of bullets, even stopping a victim's heart by bare hands.

Yet it is his sister Gretel who is the story's most memorable characters. She is enigma. A girl who can predict future (it is her that Marsh had met in Spain). A lover of poetry and eccentric pursuits, Gretel has the trickster's humor, though with dark edge. But she is insane and has motives of her own, not necessarily coinciding with the goals of the Nazi leadership. As a reader, I wanted nothing more than to find out what she's up to. But, just as it opens with Klaus and Gretel in the prologue, heading toward an unknown future in the von Westarp's mansion, the book closes with them heading toward a very different unknown (though not to her!) future in the next book of the Milkweed triptych--the one I don't intend to miss.