Review: The Life Eaters

The Life Eaters by David Brin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

During the final years of the Second world war, the Axis forces have all but been defeated. The allies have amassed the largest Armada ever known to man, and are getting ready to deal with the final death blow to the Reich. That is when everything went to shit.

It started with the defeat of the Russians on the Eastern front, who were pushed back to their lands due to interference of some new force. The allied offensive pushed forwards, and were shattered, their massive fleets sundered and sent to the bottom of the ocean due to a vengeful sea and the monsters that it spewed.

That is when they encountered the beings that came to be known as Aesirs. Reanimated gods from the Norse Pantheon, Odin, Thor, Baldr all who had appeared on the battlefields in Europe, and were fighting for the Nazis.

Each of these one man armies fell with the lethality of a comet upon unsuspecting allied forces & laid waste to them. Europe was lost, along with Great Britain, the fleets protecting her lost to the sea. There was peace for a while, as the wide expanse of the Atlantic separated the Americas from the full wrath of the so-called Gods.

Scientists in the US, believed these to be members of some alien race, who had co-opted the persona of Gods to easily subjugate the occult obsessed Reich. Formidable in battle, but not unkillable. Though the men, artillery and military resources needed to be expended to bring down even one was astronomical. They had to turn Berlin into a hellscape with ballistic missiles, just to kill one of them.

In time, the reformed Heer, Luftwaffe & Kriegsmarine, Spearheaded by the Aesir, launched the invasion of the United States and Rest of the world. The African subcontinent was subjugated in no time, most of N.America & Asia soon followed. By 1962, large swatches of the world map was dyed in Nazi colors.

Around this time, the secret of the Gods were revealed. When faced with the prospect of defeat, the occult forces of the Nazi high command, invoked a little understood magic ritual, sacrificing countless life to perform Necromancy, and raise from death & legend, entities who believed themselves to be the Gods of old. Or they knew of said method of necromancy, and the whole war as well as the inhumane concentration camps were just them collecting human cattle for sacrifice.



But soon the Gods got tired of them and took over power for themselves, and engaged in perpetual warfare. Not oil, not nuclear power, but the divine power generated from the death and suffering of mortals, which fueled the Aesir and were the new fuel for the world.

In time an arms race developed with the sacrificed souls as the commodity. Vestiges of the free world & the resistance, centered around the middle & southern hemisphere, where the warmer climates weakened the Norse Gods. In desperation, they performed rituals of their own, and created through sacrifice Gods & demigods of their own, from their own respective Pantheons. Soon Gods from the African, Egyptian, Asian, Shinto pantheons were facing off against the Aesir to stake claim to the land.



In the middle, were caught the remnants of free humanity; the one who were not slaves, sacrifices or had bent their knees to the Gods. They are engaged in a final ditch effort to reclaim the land that was theirs, while the so-called Gods continue their machinations and continue to use humans as pawns in some grand unfathomable game. Now, with the very existence of the planet in peril, which side would come out on top. Or are all marching to Ragnarok the twilight of the Gods.

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Review

The Life Eaters, a graphical adaptation of the novella by Davin Brin, holds the same alternate history world building sensibilities which were made popular by the writings of Philip. K. Dick. Written by the author as part of an anthology challenge titled ‘Hitler Victorious’. Even if it’s a terrible notion, as a reader I have to say; stories where the Nazis come out on top make for some engaging storylines. Be it ‘The Man in the High Castle’, ‘Fatherland’, or the recent highly entertaining Wolfenstein: New Order.

Yet unlike those other retellings, in Life Eaters, the Nazis don’t find some superweapon which allow them to take over the whole world. Well, they do steamroll over two thirds of the allies and make great headway into a pan Atlantic invasion, but even the divine intervention on their side can only bolster their limited forces so much. The allies & Rest of the world have a fighting chance as the war drags over two decades with either side losing and gaining land, and newfronts being opened up keeping the game board ever dynamic.

There is also this poetic, bard-like narrative of the story, which is more reminiscent of some mythological tale, with ever shifting alliances and choke full of symbolism. All of which makes the world feel organic and the storytelling engaging.

Also, in the case of the graphic adaptation, the artwork is top notch, taking cues from the likes of ‘Kingdom Come’. It has a painting aesthetic, which works well with the subject matter in question. The red of blood, and the grays of the nights, as well as the dark sooth of dust and smoke all really pop out from the pages. It also blurs the faces of many of the characters, which in the case of the Aesir make them all the more menacing and mysterious.



One complaint I have, and this is more fitting for the extended story of the Graphic novel, is how the second half of the story is meandering. It introduces several interesting elements such as the rival gods of Asia & Egypt, as well as the nonviolent tribes of the middle east. But far too little time was given for us to explore their inner workings. Even that of the Aesir or the Nazi Occult regime. Which makes the abrupt conclusion somewhat jarring.

But nonetheless, it did get my neurons firing so, for a short but engaging alternate history tale, I’ll give it 4 out of 5

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