Liliana Bodoc (1958–2018)

It feels difficult for me to offer this book the review it deserves. To be honest, I bumped into this series by sheer accident. I visited a flea market that specializes in used books for dirt cheap and thought the cover for book 2 of this series was pretty cool. The book was unopened and cost just 2USD! And then, I realized, oh crap! This is a book 2 of the series. And so I spent a ridiculous 3 years waiting for the chance to read book 1. I initially wanted to get the first book in paperback and went to several flea markets downtown. Annoyingly, book 1 is pretty hard to find. They did sell it used online for around 15 USD. Had it not been for the fact this book was sold in kindle for a bit cheaper, I would have bought the paperback edition.

I believe this is the first time I read a SFF book by an Argentinean author (outside of urban fantasy and paranormal), so I didn't quite know what to expect from this book. When I first got a kindle copy, I found out the author had died recently, which made me feel a bit more vested in reading the series.

During the initial 30% of the novel, I could clearly see why it is considered to be one of the great Latin American fantasy series that made it fortunate enough to get both an English and a Polish translation. I have never quite read a book before that has anything like Husihuilke culture. In my biased opinion, the first 30% of the novel is the best. It isn't that the rest of the story is bad per se, just that the author's writing style that is heavy in telling and poetic prose is better describing different societies and very weak for the combat chapters that happen later in the story.

To this day, I don't exactly know what the different races in the book are. From the vague descriptions, Husihuilkes are a sort of 8 feet tall human, physically very strong with dark skin and black hair that is usually braided. They are not exactly inspired by any specific indigenous culture, albeit I feel the author took some inspiration from Mapuche culture. They live in the deep south of the continent in deciduous forests and grow corn (which seems out of place and made it harder for me to pinpoint a specific baseline culture since the carbohydrate staples in South America are potato, quinoa and cassava). Men tend to be warriors and fight other tribes on occasion for no apparent reason. Their women marry as young teenagers and can't reject a man's hand in marriage. Upon reaching a certain age, teenage women pretty much have to say yes I do to the first guy that comes knocking at their family's door or risk being shunned by their community. This concept might feel a tad bit jarring for readers.

Other aspects of Husihuilkes were very cool though. I like it how whoever is the first that hears the first raindrops of the monsoon season on the ceiling gets to become the ruler of the family unit for that year. This theoretically can create unusual dynamics where even a 2 year child could become head of the household. Another enjoyable aspect of their society is the oral family tradition. Once a year, everyone in the family unit sits down and the head of the family takes out a random trinket from a leather pouch. Whatever comes out that belonged to a random ancestor is the topic of the annual monsoon story. Everyone has to listen to the story of that ancestor that could have died centuries ago because someday, the descendants might tell this story to their grandchildren. Husihuilkes don't have a written history, they are exclusively oral. The story explains that if a specific story of an ancestor is forgotten, chances are other family units in nearby villages still remember and pass it on. There are other peculiarities of their culture, which were fun to learn, albeit they don't serve much purpose in the general plot.

The other prominent race that appears in the story are the Zitzahays. We never get a drawing of what they look like, only a vague description. They seem to be around 3 to 4 feet tall, with dark fur, partially humanoid, slender tails and very large pointy ears that twitch a lot. I imagined them to look like a larger version of Momo from the Avatar cartoon.

We get very brief descriptions of the other prominent races of the continent of Los Confines. There are the treacherous Shepherds that seem to be similar to humans. The Melulús of the southern islands are kind of like bluish Selkies with pointy things on their tail appendage and four stubby webbed feet that lets them travel on the ground. We get brief descriptions of this other race that is something intermediate between a human and a Melulú with pink skin, blond hair and crystalline eyes. They inhabit the bays of Yentru near the lands of the Zitzahay. We never learn much about their culture due to what happens in the second half of the story. There is also a mysterious time and space warping owl species with semi humanoid faces that are briefly mentioned. They require a complex ritual to warp into regular space-time and suffer from insomnia when they are away from their world. I hope the sequel talks more about them. The final important race in the Confines continent are a kind of humanoid being called the Sun People. I didn't quite understand what they are, except that when they become wounded, beams of light spew from their wounds. They are very vain, with a penchant for wearing animal furs and gold jewelry, along with being prone to enslaving their own kind.

The first half of the story focuses on a specific Husihuilke man named Dulkancellin, his mother-in-law and 4 children. His life turns upside down when in a similar manner to The Hobbit, he gets a visit from an unusual person and has to embark on a dangerous journey. Prior to the visitor's arrival, the black feather of a sacred bird falls into Dulkancellin's hands during the annual village festival, a bad omen of portending battle. So in a way, while this book shares a few story aspects with LOTR, the protagonist is already aware they would embark on a journey. Only that the book purposely doesn't want to reveal the motive until very conveniently halfway through. The visitor is a Zitzahay bard named Cucub who is in a rush to bring Dulkacellin to his home city of Belearam. Loveable guy BTW. Cucub reminds me of Pippin and Merry from LOTR. Another prominent side character in the story is a wizard named Kupuka who lives in the lands of the Husihuilkes and described to be a bit like Radaghast. He reminds me of Gandalf in the sense that he shows up and vanishes at odd times while helping characters along the way. Also commands hawks to do his bidding.

Similar to LOTR, Dulkancellin finally reaches Belearam alongside a weary Cucub and becomes the representative of the Husihuilkes for a sort of Fellowship committee of the different races of the Confines. One member of each of the important races was selected by a magical premonition and their decisions will dictate the fate of the Confines. Kind of similar to the way Latin America ends up getting visitors from faraway lands, this becomes the main plot of the book. Why are these foreigners planning to visit them? The book ends up going around in circles for a good portion of the story without giving definite answers. I felt the bouncing around hurt the story a lot and made it harder to connect to the Fellowship of the Confines.

I kind of liked the intrigue between the true intentions of some of the fellowship members. Similar to LOTR, we have at least 1 Boromir that causes friction every step of the way. With better editing and less time wasted with endless what if dialogue about why the fellowship was reunited, we could have had a better chance to meet the members and connect to them. This is where the book starts to flounder. It could have skipped a bunch of pages of "the magic will tell us when to reveal more about why you are in this city", and just get to the point and spend more time getting to meet everyone.

Another weakness I already mentioned previously is that the author is not very skillful describing battles. Just very tell, and not even a modicum of show. It felt realistic in the sense that the battles tend to be short accompanied by periods of rest. This is something English language literature seldom seems to get right, preferring to only care about the gore and not the boring stuff like logistics. But the battles feel so lackluster that I believe the author clearly hated writing those chapters and wanted to get to the worldbuilding chapters instead. This was a huge wasted opportunity and I fault the editors. The story is really fabulous in my opinion, I enjoyed how the book ends. It's just that by making these battle chapters so meh, that you don't care if such and such character dies. I should feel something! LOTR did this very well. Even though we barely get to meet them, the reader feels for Hama and Eowyn's brother.

The writing is hard to explain in a English language review. While the author clearly detested writing the battle chapters, her prose really shines in the favored worldbuilding chapters that just feel so lyrical and beautiful. I look at the words in Spanish and feel convinced I would never be able to capture the vivid beauty of the prose in English. No matter how good the translator tries, some of the magic of the book would be lost in translation. In a way, I believe part of the reason why so many English language reviews of the book get 2-3 stars is because of the difficulty of giving the prose the justice it deserves in a translation. And so, the reader inevitably hyperfocuses on the writing shortfalls that I already mentioned.

And so, I end up in a conundrum. The beginning of the book is akin to an exquisite wine that must be savored with delight, while the later chapters expose several writing pitfalls that make it stumble into an uneven pace. Had I read the book in English, I would have given it 3 stars due to the inherent writing problems. For better or worse, the book's reliance on the crutch of eye-watering Spanish prose somewhat alleviates its problems. I teetered a lot between giving it 3 1/2 and 4 stars. At the end, the overall story was enjoyable enough to earn 4 stars, albeit only because I am a big sucker for pretty Spanish prose and good worldbuilding.… (meer)