Reidon was born weak, sickly, and small. Afflicted with a painful disease and abandoned by his parents because of it, he has had to fight tooth and nail for every minor advantage life has allowed him.
His perseverance has not gone unnoticed, however, and when the most powerful artificial intelligence in human history takes an interest in him, things began to change quickly.
Granted a CAD—Combat Assistance Device—with awful specs but an infinite potential for growth, Reidon finds himself at the bottom of his class at the Galens Institute, one of the top military academies in the Collective. Along with his best friend, Viviana Arada, Reidon will have to start his long climb through the school rankings, and on to the combat tournament circuits that have become humanity’s greatest source of excitement and entertainment.
So begins the rise of a god. So begins the ascent of the Stormweaver.
Warformed: Iron Prince by Bryce O’Connor and Luke Chmilenko is what I’d call a progression sci-fi. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of this book, let’s first talk about progression fantasy a little. For those who enjoy anime, a popular example of progression fantasy is Solo Leveling (Crunchyroll’s 2024 top anime). The subgenre’s description is in the title: power fantasies in which the character(s) progress in some way, be that getting stronger or better at something, usually via some form of broken magic or a game-like plot device.
In the futuristic world of Iron Prince, rather than magic or game-like mechanics driving the characters’ progression, the plot device is an alien technology known as a CAD (Combat Assistance Device). These act as both weapons and (for some) power armor that read and enhance a person’s natural capabilities, many of which level up and change over time. These CADs allow characters to perform superhuman feats, some of which seem to bend the laws of physics, and there are prestigious academies dedicated to training CAD users for the military.
The main character, Reidon ‘Rei’ Ward, is your classic underdog orphan (a ward of the state), disadvantaged in physical combat due to a bone condition, but determined to meet the bare minimum requirement to obtain a CAD. Turns out, CADs can cure terminal illnesses, which might give Rei the leg-up he needs to join his friend, Viviana ‘Viv’ Arada, at Galen’s Institute, a top-of-the-top military academy.
Given my prior description of progression fantasy plot devices, it shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler to say that Rei gets a CAD that lets him quickly gain strength and abilities to compete with those in the academy. This review wouldn’t get very far if I didn’t cover that much.
Rei’s CAD is unique in its growth speed and works similarly to Saiyan power-level progression in Dragon Ball Z, where the worse Rei loses, the more his CAD learns and adapts, making him stronger by acquiring data for where he was lacking in each fight. In other words, at the beginning of the book, Rei loses constantly, but he knows, and you know, this will eventually lead to him becoming overpowered. His power-scaling quickly shifts from a slow burn to exponential growth through implied training montages with the supporting characters, allowing him to catch up with his friends and rivals, and there’s no end of characters willing to express their surprise and outright horror at how fast his CAD has evolved.
Now, if you’ve been reading this genre for as long as I have, you eventually recognize that most progression fantasy is written to provide one thing: power fantasy catharsis. And you better believe Warformed: Iron Prince raids the cupboards of narrative devices to set that up. We’ve got characters from wealthy families, sadistic bullies, and genius prodigies with that juicy “you either have it, or you don’t” mentality, many of them going out of their way to tell our poor underdog protagonist that he doesn’t belong at the aforementioned prestigious academy. But that’s all part of the fun, right? We want Rei to prove them wrong, and we, like Rei’s friends, have the inside knowledge of how he’s going to do it, along with all the plot devices and events to help him to do it. We’ve got power rankings, we’ve got secret abilities, and to top it all off, we even have a tournament arc. In other words, the book’s formula is almost point-for-point a shounen battle manga, like a sci-fi Naruto or My Hero Academia (and who doesn’t love those?).
Although the power fantasy catharsis will be the draw for most readers, the heart of the story (like all good YA romps) lies in the friend group. There’s some really nice banter between Rei, Viv, and the others of the core group, and even a little between them and the rival characters. There’s a lot of growth, too. You can see characters learning to see from other perspectives and, as an inevitable product of Rei’s increasing strength, acquiring a lot of humility, because envy is their only alternative. I was honestly surprised when one of the aforementioned prodigy characters warms up to Rei and joins his group of friends, and, due to her seeing his potential, proceeds to beat the snot out of him in sparring matches for the sake of making him stronger.
What worries me about the story going forward is the risk of these characters being thrown by the wayside until they are given a boon as powerful as Rei’s CAD. Shounen battle manga has a trend of introducing increasingly strong supporting characters and villains until the original cast becomes irrelevant bystanders or mere cheerleaders. As a story that follows the formula pretty closely, I hope this series avoids that pitfall.
Power escalation will also be interesting going forward. Granted, Warformed: Iron Prince did a good job of giving the reader an idea of just how high the ladder of power goes in this world by revealing early on how strong some of the veteran characters are. There’s also the foreshadowed threat posed by the aliens this technology came from, which could lead to an intergalactic battle.
Given the potential of this series, I think I’ll hold off on reading its sequels until a few more of them are out. I’ve fallen off series in the past by getting too invested, only to have to wait years for the next book, then forgetting everything that’s happened prior. If that doesn’t bother you, however, and you enjoy this type of progression/power fantasy sci-fi, give this a go.
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
Stuart Cripps-Schnoor