Fiction Analysis - 'Loyal 2 Chaos' by Kenny Ching
Part 3 of a Post-Apocalyptic Old Testament Story
Author’s Note: Welcome back to Fiction Analysis. This is going to be the last part of my mini-series of reviews of the Chronicles of Gog series. For the analyses of the previous books, click here and here.
Warning: As always, there will be spoilers. I will keep the ones for this book to a minimum, but like with my analysis of All Bow Down, there will be spoilers for the previous books. Thus, readers are advised to read those books or at least my analyses of them before reading this one.
Introduction
Welcome back to the review series of Kenny Ching’s Chronicles of Gog book series. From what I can tell, this should be the last one in the series, at least for the time being. I hope you’ve read the previous two books: Illusion of Control and All Bow Down. As you may remember, both books ended in a cliffhanger.
This time around, it was Tavian’s love interest (and wife) Abby who died. But if you’re familiar with this series, then you know death isn’t necessarily the end of a character’s involvement in the story. Abby is no exception, though I’m getting ahead of myself.
Another character who got back from the dead was the giant Og, as readers would know from All Bow Down. I mentioned this because he became the major villain of the story. To quote the blurb of this book:
King Wu has taken control of Gog, but his grip of power on power is shaky. He hears the popularity of his greatest soldier, Tavian, whom Wu secretly seeks to eliminate despite the protests of his son Lu, Tavian’s best friend. Yet, Tavian remains fiercely loyal to his King, even as his allies push him to rebel against Wu and become King himself. Meanwhile, in the eastern desert city of Magog, a threat to humanity mutates unchecked, and Queen Egypt must make risky preparations for a potentially cataclysmic war with the cyborg giant Og and his half-human minions.
So that’s the setup for Loyal 2 Chaos. This brings me to the next part of this analysis, the story.
Story
Unlike the previous book All Bow Down, Loyal 2 Chaos took part about five years after its predecessor. Thus, it felt like a different story in contrast to the previous two books which felt more like two parts of the same story.
Here, the readers saw the aftermath of the Triopolites-Kukazi War which saw the Kukazi emerging victoriously over their hated enemies. Wu became the King of Gog while his robo-wife Egypt became Queen. Meanwhile, Tavian became the King’s loyal soldier; fighting alongside him was his best friend and the King’s own son, Prince Lu.
However, all was not well in Gog. As the blurb had mentioned before, a new power had arisen in the far off-desert in the form of cyborgs led by Og. Tavian and his squad of soldiers were sent on various missions to deal with this emerging threat. However, he also had to deal with the jealousy of his own King.
Despite his fierce loyalty, Tavian continued to draw the ire of Wu. This led to the King constantly sabotaging his best soldier’s equipment. These irrational actions were not lost on Tavian’s teammates who lost their respect for Wu in favor of Tavian.
Meanwhile, we also learned that Egypt, who is more of a robot than an actual human being, continued to perform many scientific experiments. Some were dangerous, but others had helped both our hero and Gog in general. One particular handiwork of hers was an AI that was generated based off Abby; readers of the previous book may remember that after she died, Egypt decided drill into her brain.
Thus, we see our heroes having to deal with two threats: external and internal. External in the cyborgs of Magog led by Og, internal in the jealous King Wu of Gog who seek to kill Tavian.
Now let’s move on to the characters of this book.
Characters
It should go without saying at this point, but this book (like the series in general) has many characters. As readers may remember, this series is basically a retelling of the Book of Samuel, with many of the characters having their own ‘biblical counterparts’. I find these parallels to be a nice touch, I love one particular scene near the end of the story (if you’ve read the book, you’ll know which one).
In the previous two analyses, I’ve said that both Illusion of Control and All Bow Down don’t have a clear protagonist. Rather, they have two each. Loyal 2 Chaos did not break from the mold as they followed this same ‘deuteragonist model’ that was established by the author. This time the two protagonists of the story are Tavian and Lu.
I’ll start off with Tavian. As I have said before, he is the David counterpart. And just like David, he remained loyal to his King even though that person was trying to kill him. The readers, like some of the characters in the book, may think he’s being naïve. To be honest, I can certainly understand this criticism. While Tavian’s loyalty is commendable, his naivete did cause him to make a mistake that led to the death of an important character.
Now let’s get to Lu. Firstly, I feel like I’ve made a mistake in my previous analyses because I barely talked about the prince, thus giving the impression that he’s not an important character. But he is and it is finally time for me to give him his due. I love the character development that he went through in this story.
In the previous books, he was pretty much a spoiled brat who hated his father and was generally irreverent; I’ll be honest, I wanted to see his face clocked at times. But in this story, he was much more mature. He became more of a man as he got a wife and started to take his responsibilities as a Prince seriously. More importantly, he grew to love and appreciate his father.
Unfortunately, King Wu did not necessarily return that affection. This brings me to the antagonists of the story.
The first I’ll talk about is Wu. Unfortunately, the king had gone off the rails. We see this foreshadowed in the previous book, All Bow Down, where he basically made a deal with the devil to get an edge over the Triopolites. Thus, Loyal 2 Chaos capped off this character development (to use the term broadly) as Wu started out from a heroic character in the first book to a more morally ambiguous one in the second, and now he was a full-on villain.
Quite the fall from grace for Mad King Wu.
Next, we have Og the King of Magog. We didn’t see much of him in the book, but we definitely saw his handiwork.
Finally, we get to Egypt who was a much more ambiguous character. Sure, she’s creepy and capable of great destruction. But she had also been helping our heroes. Like with the previous books, she’s definitely a wild card. Never know what we’ll get out of her.
There are also other characters of note such as the AI Abby who’s trying to get out of Egypt’s virtual prison, Tavian’s war buddies who had his back over Wu, the prophet Yu-El who remained opposed to Wu and Egypt’s rule over Gog, and so on. But I don’t want to make this review too long, so let’s move on to the setting.
Setting
With the story taking place about five years after its predecessors, the setting was quite different than that of those two books. For example, the nuclear fallout that surrounded the City of Gog had now disappeared thanks to Egypt. Replacing them was a verdant forest. All Bow Down somewhat showed the woods when the Kukazi took refuge there, but Loyal 2 Chaos greatly expanded on them.
In addition to this was the desert which served as the location of the City of Magog. Magog itself was quite the place as it was the location of Og and his cult of cyborgs who worship him as a god. After spending the entirety of the series in Gog (or its surroundings), I do find Magog to be a breath of fresh air.
I like how we slowly see more of the world as the series goes on. In Illusion of Control, it was just the city. Then All Bow Down showed the forests in the outskirts. Loyal 2 Chaos showed even more as we saw the desert where Magog was located.
And apparently, the whole series takes place in Nevada.
All this makes me wonder if there’s going to be more to the world than Gog and Magog. Judging by the name though, I doubt it.
One more thing I want to mention about the setting is the trans-humanist aspect. This is something was always there since the first book. Then it was made more explicit with robot Egypt in the previous book. Loyal 2 Chaos built it up even more as the book brought us AI Abby and the cyborgs of Magog. This is a heavy topic and Mr. Ching did well in making this theme an integral part of the story without being overbearing about it.
Conclusion
And that’s Loyal 2 Chaos by Kenny Ching. This is an interesting third book of the series. I find it more compelling than the first book, Illusion of Control. At this point, the author had hit his stride and was able to set up the story for that awaited resolution in the next book (it better be resolved by the next book, lol). On the other hand, I still enjoyed All Bow Down more because of the mix of war and political intrigue in that book.
Personally, I was at first under the impression that this book was going to be the series conclusion. Why? Because there were three books published as of the writing of this post. But as it turned out, the book also ended in yet another cliffhanger.
I don’t mind though, since I’m loving the story. But I hope the author will follow it up; nothing’s more annoying than a series that died without a conclusion, especially one you’ve put some investment in. According to the author’s note at the end, it seems like he is working on the sequel called The Doctrine of Fear. However, the website linked is dead. If Mr. Ching is reading this post, I hope he’ll tell about that particular project.
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