#production magic

Van earns the status of baron within the first 40 pages of the novel, but the bulk of the book focuses on all of the awkward and necessary trappings that come with being the lord of a dinky little village whose worth is suddenly far more than most presume. To a point, EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 is fluffy fun: all of the main characters are good people (e.g., King Dino isn't such a bad fellow), the author always treats the story's more sensitive and innocent characters with appropriate caution (e.g., Arte, the shy girl, gets a confidence boost; Kusala, an otherwise simpleminded adventurer, is deemed heroic and gallant), and when trouble reaches Van's doorstep, one always finds humor before stumbling into calamity (e.g., the ruffians aren't bad, just uneducated and poorly mannered; the invading troupe from Yelenetta isn't a threat, but simply lead by a guy who is impossibly stupid).

The novel pivots from its start in civil engineering to focus on provincial governance and military readiness. Van is keen on balancing his citizen's needs and the demands of the sovereign.

Van: "Rather than getting fixated on profits from the new town, we had to focus on making it safe and secure" (page 67).

To be sure, the book chronicles military maneuvers, complete with wyvern dive-bombers, rapid-fire ballistae, and more. But the imperatives of warfare arrive in spite of the peace Van carves for his people. And one of things this author does extraordinarily well is articulate the need for solace, goodness, sympathy, and the value of reciprocity.

Examples abound. When another tribe of apkallu merpeople arrive, Van promptly requests they exchange gifts. In a scene following Seatoh's absorption of a nearby village that fell on hard times, Ortho, an adventurer, ruminates on the tragedy of picking up all of one's belongings for a single, distant, errant hope (Ortho: "[A small village] was like their entire world, and making the decision to leave was never an easy one," page 61). And when all of those merchants and adventurers come out to the sticks to take advantage of the country-folk, they are, in short, rebuffed for being shortsighted (and Bell and Rango pledge to be honest brokers through and through). And when Bell and Rango purchase slaves to help run their new merchant business, they bring hundreds of people to Seatoh and treat them as well as one would treat a refugee. One slave woman, a warrior named Paula, sobs as she eats.

EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v2 is a fun, human story. Sure, there are dragons and kings and magic and myriad siege warfare, but so much of this novel series' supblots focus on circumventing circumstance and simply doing well by one's people.

For example, the novel series' whole concept of slavery is fascinating. Slaves aren't unusable, lower-class people; slaves are people deemed of less reciprocal value. Here, slaves can be former knights, the daughter of a fallen noble, the child of the president of a defunct company, former bards, blacksmiths on hard times, former adventurers, and so forth. These folks (or their family) lost everything and were sold away. Their humanity thus taken for granted. But once they reach the village of Seatoh, and Van's people step in to help, one understands why Paula was in tears. When Paula arrives, a villager brings her a chair to sit in, to rest. The warrior is confused. Why give a slave a chair? The old man responds: "We only just arrived here ourselves. We plopped ourselves on the ground just like you folks, and the original villagers brought us chairs" (page 107). Just like that.

Awkward and amusing plot twists unfold in the novel's latter chapters, and readers will be pressed to query whether Van's isolation in Scuderia's backwoods will really be the blessing the young man imagines. Comically, Van holds a barbeque to celebrate every achievement (e.g., birthday, new village arrivals, killing off wild beasts), but the newly fortified village of Seatoh is still vulnerable. Soon, everyone will want to learn more about "that new baron who supposedly took out a dragon" (page 106).

The novel is cleanly written. Heavy-handed worldbuilding gives way to an easier pace. Lord Van possesses the presumably throwaway skill of a production mage, one who can turn lumber, stone, or metal into any shape he desires. The world's magecraft is complex and somewhat clumsy, but readers soon learn that studying the magic of a fantasy novel is irrelevant when it's used for comically tedious activities, like assembling cabins and digging sewage tunnels.

Lord Van assembles domiciles, establishes a village outer wall, digs moats and trenches, and more. In short, he's less of a chief governing figure, stationed at a rural outpost, and more of a chief engineer with a lot of time to kill.

If this sounds banal and unimaginative, it is. But it works. It's not Lord Van's intelligent decision making while under attack by giant lizard creatures that earns him the respect of the people. No, the people end up liking the kid because he redirects the river to give them access to fresh water. Similarly, Lord Van doesn't earn the awe of the people via cool-headed negotiation with the apkallu, rarely seen merpeople. No, the village flocks to his side because the kid builds for them a warm home, tools to ply their trades, and a private bath to tend to their wounds.

EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v1 surrounds the main character with a crew of devoted allies who each spy in Lord Van a bit of brilliance they hope to nurture to some degree: Esparda (stern butler and likely retired soldier), Till (flighty maid), Dee (knight, deputy commander), Khamsin (servant), and others.

And while Lord Van is oblivious to their affections, he knows how to make use of the skills of those around him. Till, for example, is treated as a ditzy maid, only 10 year older than the protagonist. In truth Till is incredibly sincere and wields her compassion and devotion on her sleeve; she follows orders because she knows they are right, not because she's witless.

Notably, the novel incorporates the archetype of characters with soft contradictions almost everywhere: scarred adventurers yearning for friendship and camaraderie; landless nobles in search of purpose, family, and devotion; traveling merchants on the verge of poverty who find one final grain of hope.

Building up a village in the sticks is sure to draw attention, but almost every threat the nameless village faces is an organic, external one: bandits, beasts, monsters. This is an easygoing novel, for sure, as word of an invasion or word of an encroaching force is scarcely mentioned. Humorously, Lord Van moves incrementally closer toward building a legitimately fortified cityscape, despite the local population initially numbering fewer than 100. All of that ore in the forests? The abundant cropland? The hardworking citizens? At one point, Lord Van proposes they build the equivalent of a "star city," which in Europe's 16th and 17th centuries, showcased the strength of modern engineering during periods of nearly uninterrupted warfare.

EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v1 doesn't have technical and calculated combat, it doesn't have strenuously negotiated statecraft, it doesn't have highly coordinated castle politics, and it doesn't have scheming secondary characters waiting to pounce from the shadows. EASYGOING TERRITORY DEFENSE v1 does have inquisitive characters who change their mind, awkward and unusual battle-survival scenarios, complicated family alliances, and politics-as-background-music that's rational but not incessantly noisy.