Review: Pact
If you’ve been following my articles and blog posts, you may have noted that a while back I mentioned that I intended to start posting short reviews of various stories. If you have listened to even a few episodes of Stories Across Borders, chances are high that you know that I am a big fan of the web serials Worm and Ward. This is where those two things converge as for this first review I’m taking a look at a web serial called Pact, written by J.C. McCrae (perhaps better known as Wildbow), the author behind Worm and Ward.
Unlike the other two stories I have mentioned, which are superhero stories, Pact is more of an urban fantasy story. It follows Blake Thorburn, a twenty-year-old with a troubled history and a historically troublesome family, as a dramatic turn of events sees him thrust unwillingly and unexpectedly into the world of magic and monsters.
Strengths
I want to start things off by taking a look at the things that I think Pact does well before getting into the areas that were a little bit lacking. Going forward, future reviews will probably also follow this format.
Worldbuilding
Pact’s world of practitioners and Others (spellcasters and supernatural beings in this setting) is layered. The worldbuilding is complex and comprehensive and seems to swing from having very clearly defined rules and lore in some places to intentional vagueness that even the characters within the world struggle to navigate in others.
Magic is integral to the construction of this world and there are some clearly defined rules. Practitioners and most Others can’t lie without suffering consequences, so they must navigate social interactions carefully and play political games with each other where lies must be by omission and truths must be misleading. Others can be bound or warded off by constructions that strongly oppose their nature - faeries are disadvantaged by the blunt and direct while goblins can typically be bound by the pure and cleansing, for example. Certain numbers like three and seven carry a degree of power to them. Perhaps most importantly, people who are far removed from the reality of magic and Others experience a degree of protection from those things by virtue of their “innocence.” A practitioner or Other who introduces an innocent to the reality of the world experiences some karmic responsibility for that individual.
Despite all these rules though, a lot about magic and Others seems to almost actively fight against being simple or easy to sort into neat little boxes. Karma isn’t about what is good or bad, but swings positively or negatively depending on what is right or wrong. A completely immoral act might be karmically good for an individual because it fits in with how the world is supposed to be. Conversely, a moral act that goes against the natural order might be karmically bad. Others have many classifications - demons, angels, faeries, goblins, ghosts, bogeymen, wraiths, deities - the list is practically endless. However, many Others cannot really be so easily labelled. They straddle lines between categories or subvert them entirely. Or those labels are simply based on misconceptions to begin with. The same is true for different types of magic.
All of that goes towards creating a world that is very difficult for someone to navigate in-universe, especially someone like Blake who is thrown into a tense situation with little to no preparation. Practitioners are constantly walking on eggshells and balancing on very dangerous tightropes. That’s why practitioner families work hard to build generational power and prepare children for the world they are stepping into long before they actually awaken them to the world of magic and allow them to see things for what they really are.
Naturally, this can lead to a lot of political manipulation and power games as different dynasties do what they can to secure their own safety, prosperity and karma. It also means that individuals with access to a lot of power - dangerous power - are viewed as threats to a fragile balance. Diabolists, practitioners who deal with demons, are considered by most to be dangerous just by virtue of their existence since demons are the most malevolent of Others who destroy just about anything they come into contact with.
Practitioners must navigate a world in which good isn’t always right, where they cannot lie and where they are constantly working with and against (sometimes at the same time) forces that are not truly within the realms of human comprehension. This makes for exciting reading because every interaction between practitioners, Others or both carries an implicit threat of catastrophe. At any moment, a wrong word can be judged a lie by the spirits of the world and render you powerless. Even sarcasm is dangerous for a practitioner. At any instant, a simple error can leave one vulnerable to threats that they are no longer protected from. The very nature of the world itself creates suspense and tension.
What is truly impressive though, is that we do get to understand some of these inner workings over time. Pact will often show us the world through the eyes of Others which can give the reader a sense for the fundamentals that underpin everything, even if they don’t give us an outright understanding. Because one of the greatest successes of Pact’s worldbuilding is that it manages to combine the hard rules with the more vague and conceptual elements in a way that not only doesn’t clash but actually makes sense. If anything, the combination of the two and the places where one aspect or the other takes precedence lends greatly to the overall atmosphere of the story - a sense that few people truly understand the world and most are just working with what they have access to. A sense that there is always something dangerous lurking under the surface and that you might actually be better off without the knowledge of what that danger is and how to fight it.
Characters might experience advantages to joining the practice in their day to day lives, but most quickly learn that those advantages are not necessarily worth the cost of entry.
Honestly, given the complexity of the worldbuilding and magic system of Pact, I could go on about it for hours. But this is meant to be a short review so I will move on to the next section and leave you with that.
Characters
Pact has quite a large cast of characters, although not nearly as expansive as Worm or Ward’s. That means plenty of opportunities to create interesting and compelling people to serve as a lens to experience the story through. Especially in the case of a world like Pact, where the very nature of things quickly makes black and white views of what is good or evil fall apart and blend into varying shades of grey. Very few characters in Pact are outright purely good or purely evil. Most are just doing their best to keep themselves afloat and put themselves and their loved ones into an advantageous position in a very dangerous world. In a story where right and good are not synonymous, morality becomes tricky and that leads to some fascinating characters.
Blake, as an example, is a very compelling protagonist. He is surrounded by subtle political manoeuvring, traditions built up over generations and decidedly grey morality. Blake, however, is blunt and aggressive. He is determined not to be caged and he truly wants to do good - even knowing that good isn’t always right. By his nature, he contrasts the world around him so strongly that it would be difficult not to wonder what he will do next and how that will alter the trajectory of the story. On top of that, the odds are very much stacked against him because of a karmic debt he was born into, a bad reputation he didn’t earn and his own ignorance as to the workings of a system that goes against the very fibre of his being. Audiences love an underdog, and Blake isn’t just an underdog but one who is very easy to like. You can’t help but root for him even as his worldview is perfect for showcasing the flaws of the practitioner experience.
Blake isn’t the only compelling character in Pact either. McCrae perfectly captures the energy of an excitable young boy with Evan without failing to show how his experiences with the Hyena have affected him and changed the way he thinks. Evan manages to be a bright and positive light in a dark story. He is funny, fearless and determined and just wants to help Blake. However, the marks of the Hyena remain visible in his hatred of being separated from or losing people, his unwillingness to accept death and his desire to be useful and powerful. Granted, some of this can also be chalked up to his youth. So perhaps it is more accurate to say that his experiences have dialled up many of those traits to a new level if they were already present.
Many less human characters are also interesting and well written. Others are more often than not slaves to their own nature. Despite this, they can still express a range of personalities, beliefs and ambitions. The Others are not just empty monsters, they are also actively engaged in the story and influencing how it plays out with their plans and connections. In a way, many of them are people. However, they never stop feeling other. Even Green Eyes, who is largely benevolent, never really feels like a human thanks to her unique quirks and mannerisms. Even Other characters who look human, like Padraic, have minds that work in an almost alien way. This is just another thing that makes the world of Pact feel so compelling and layered.
As with the worldbuilding, I could continue talking about great characters in Pact for a while. I haven’t even touched on characters like Maggie, Laird, Sandra, Jeremy, Conquest or Fell. You’ll just have to read the story to learn about them.
Themes
As with most stories, there are a handful of running themes throughout Pact. The big ones, in my opinion, are freedom and identity. There is also the throughline of dismantling broken systems and embracing positive change - or just change in general - which seems to be a consistent element across McCrae’s work.
What Pact does very well is interweaving those themes into the plot without screaming at you that they are present. The story’s themes are simply natural elements of the plot and characters. Most of the characters are in some way bound. Either they are bound literally in the case of many Others, or they are bound by their traditions and personal histories, the rules of the practice, their families and/or the world they live in. Some characters break under the pressure and simply accept their bindings, while others search and scheme for ways to break free of them. Then you have characters like Blake in the mix who actively rally against stagnancy, and who crave freedom, and you end up with a lot of intriguing mindsets all interacting. Sometimes with opposed goals, otherwise with goals that align but an inability to trust each other because of the situations they are trapped in or methodologies that don’t align as cleanly as their goals do.
Identity is also a big recurring theme in Pact. It is explored very strongly with Blake, Rose and Maggie in different ways, each of them struggling to claim a place for themselves in the world. However, something very cool that Pact does here is that it also explores how the themes of freedom and identity relate to one another. Often the situations we find ourselves trapped in and how we respond to being trapped in them can dramatically influence our personalities over time. A great deal of characters in Pact exemplify this.
With such themes as identity and freedom, the additional element of change and fighting a broken system that are also present to varying degrees in Worm and Ward are something of a given, especially given Blake’s personality. This is ultimately where a lot of the conflict comes from - people attempting to preserve the system, people trying to change it from within and people who are actively and openly trying to dismantle it. Everything is tied together quite neatly thematically.
Weaknesses
Of course, while I have sung Pact’s praises, no story is perfect and there are things in Pact that could have been done better.
Characters
This might seem like an odd thing to lead with given that I just mentioned the characters as one of the strengths of Pact, but hear me out. While many of the characters in the story are well fleshed-out and extremely compelling, a lot of characters aren’t. Obviously very minor characters get a pass here, but I’m talking about characters who are otherwise very present in the plot.
In particular, Blake and Rose’s friends from Toronto come to mind. For how significant a role they end up playing in the story, most of them don’t feel that well developed. Tiff and Joel were the least problematic here, but even they could have done with a bit more presence. Ty was largely saved by his relationship with Evan, but was otherwise a bit of a non-entity as well. Unfortunately, the biggest offender here was Alexis who, for how important she was meant to be to Blake, didn’t really carry that weight narratively. She was introduced much too late and given far too little time on the page to make the audience care about her as much as Blake does. So we struggle to find their friendship and history engaging.
Rose herself is a more difficult situation. Because the story is told almost entirely from Blake’s view, we don’t really get to understand the nuances of their relationship, the complexities of the situation they are in and much of what Rose is really thinking or doing. Certain aspects of the plot would make it difficult to do, but I think the story would have benefited if we could see more of both sides of their dynamic. Rose certainly would have been a lot more engaging and sympathetic as a result. Which isn’t to say I dislike her or don’t understand where she’s coming from, but it would have felt much different and I think Pact would have been better for showing us more of her perspective.
Pacing
I have seen some complaints floating around - including from the author himself to an extent in his afterword - that parts of Pact dragged on a bit. Admittedly, I can see where those complaints come from. Although the first chapter of Arc 1 is a little slow, the next few chapters are pretty explosively paced. After a while though, the plot does slow down a little more again as Blake tries to find his footing in Jacob’s Bell and it doesn’t really pick up in full again until Blake’s return to Toronto and the events that unfold there. But I think most stories - especially ones as long as Pact - have a pace that ebbs and flows and I didn’t actually have a problem with this myself.
My issue isn’t even really pacing, if I’m being completely honest. Not exactly anyway. I just don’t know what else to call it. I could be vague and just say “vibes,” but I think that’s a little too vague. Whatever we’re calling it, the problem here is something I’ve talked about a fair bit in SAB. When everything consistently goes wrong for a character and they don’t get to achieve any wins, it makes the story feel like it’s dragging and makes the audience disengage a bit because they stop feeling like there’s any mystery as to the possible outcomes of plot points.
Throughout Pact, Blake doesn’t get to have a lot of wins. It’s one thing for a story to get progressively more dire and things in general to get worse over time, but this is usually offset by characters achieving small victories. Those small victories mean the characters and audience both have something to hope for. It also means there’s contrast so the bad things hit harder. In Pact, there is a very long section of the story in which Blake doesn’t have any of those little wins. Instead, we watch him get beaten down and ground into the dirt more and more for several chapters. This would be fine if there was enough in the way of those small victories, but after a while you just kind of expect things to go badly for him despite his best efforts. Once he escapes the Drains, things do start to swing back a little bit again and by the time we’re getting to the climax of the story, the problem is gone. But the issue is still there for a while and it removes the tension when you’re certain that things are going to just go badly every time Blake tries something, often through no fault of his own. The audience needs to feel like the possibility of success exists to be concerned with the potential for failure.
Conclusion
It’s difficult to talk about J.C. McCrae’s stories without comparing them to the Wormverse. Especially if you, like me, had only read the two parahuman stories before giving his other work a shot. So it’s hard to go into Pact without preconceived notions of what to expect. Even in this review, I’ve mentioned the author’s other work a couple of times.
That being said though, I do think Pact stands on its own. I won’t pretend that I enjoyed it as much as I did Worm or Ward, but I did like it a lot. It has its flaws, as all stories do, but it was ultimately a compelling narrative set in a fascinating world that I want to explore more. Luckily for me, I’m going to have the chance because the world of Pact is revisited in McCrae’s latest serial, Pale.
If you haven’t read any of McCrae’s work, I highly recommend you do. He has been a favourite writer of mine since I first read Worm years ago and Pact didn’t sour that impression for me.
