Clare L. Deming

I don’t remember how I first came across this book, but I added it to my to-be-read list after listening to the author speak at a panel by Orbit Books. The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin is the first book in The Combat Codes Saga (paid links).

Here is the blurb:

In a world long ago ravaged by war, the nations have sworn an armistice never to use weapons of mass destruction again. Instead, highly-skilled warriors known as Grievar Knights represent their nations’ interests in brutal hand-to-hand combat.

Murray Pearson was once a famed Knight until he suffered a loss that crippled his homeland — but now he’s on the hunt to discover the next champion.

In underground and ruthless combat rings, an orphaned boy called Cego is making a name for himself. Murray believes Cego has what it takes to thrive in the world’s most prestigious combat academy – but first, Cego must prove himself in the vicious arenas of the underworld. And survival isn’t guaranteed.

This book was definitely written with a lot of mixed martial arts (MMA) and Brazilian jiu-jitsu in mind. Fortunately, I have watched a good amount of those sports and even rolled with my husband at his local jiu-jitsu class once. The author uses the names for many of the positions in those sports, so I think that a reader who is familiar with them will get a better visual picture of the fights in this story.

At first I had trouble determining whether this book was fantasy or science fiction. After seeing a bit more of the world, it was clearly science fiction, but to the characters like Cego, some of the aspects like his own background and the presence of seemingly magical sprite-like creatures made it seem more like fantasy.

The story is told through two point-of-view perspectives: that of Cego – the up-and-coming kid who is stuck fighting in the slave rings, and Murray – the old fighter who retired after a devastating loss. While much of the plot is predictable as a coming-of-age story for Cego, a couple of intriguing twists occurred toward the end which have encouraged me to pick up the next book in the series.

Have you read any fantasy or science fiction novels that featured a specific fighting style like this book? Let me know in the comments (above).

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