Where to begin? Well I'll start by saying that the author, Filipe Faria, was very young when he wrote this book. For that I have to praise him for achieving the publishing of a book at such a young age, specially in a genre that is not very common in our language. From what I know, there's only tree authors in our country that have successfully followed the fantasy route, Filipe Faria being one of them. So take in account said facts before judging what I'm writing bellow.
Warning: The text below contains spoilers and a fair amount of sarcasm.
I wanted to start reading fantasy books as a preparation for possibly writing my own. Decided to choose one written in English and one written in Portuguese, the English one was a classic The Hobbit, for Portuguese the options were much more limited so I ended up choosing A Manopla de Karasthan... I must say that the book became a bit hard to read after reaching about the half way point. Not because the writing was complex and hard, it's actually very accessible, detailed but easy to understand. There's the occasional mistake here are there, but that is not relevant at all for me, (I give way more mistakes in my writing), what matters to me is the story, the characters and the world.
The preface is basically an info dump, where the author/narrator compresses the history of Allaryia since it's creation until the start of the story. I personally think that it's a bit too long, (about nine pages - A5 format).
Then comes the prologue where the story starts with a practice sword fight between the main character Aewyre Thoryn and his mentor/master of arms. We get to know a little bit about him, basically that every female within the city wants to jump on him... and he jumps on them all. We also get the start of the journey, where the protagonist and his friend... mentor... wizard begin their journey to find out what happened to Aewyre's father (he was last seen fighting an evil being that wanted to take over the world in the evil territory of Asmodeon). And that is basically the premise.
The adventure begins with the two characters leaving their city, and here is where things start to bother me a little. In just a few chapters the group increases from just Aewyre (filling the role of the warrior with the special magical sword) and Allumno (the wizard), to eight members! Lhiannah (a arinnir - aka basically an amazon), Worick (a thuragar - it's a darf, he has a hammer and everything, his people live in mountains etc), Quenestil (a eahan - a human like being that as a deep contact with nature and uses a bow... it's an elf), Babaki (a antroleo - lion humanoid), Taislin (a burrik - more or less a small hobbit with two knifes and the habit of stealing everything) and Slayra (a eahanoir - dark elf or night elf). Now it has to be appreciated the effort that the author had in renaming all these kinds of "species", but their stereotypes are the expected ones. Lhiannah doesn't accept when males abuse females, Worick is stubborn, loves to drink and hammer things, Quenestil likes the purity of his race's contact with nature, Babaki can not control the lion/beast inside of him, Taislin is confused with a child and is very curious and, Slayra is more like an "assassin" type, being mischievous and such.
Why did they all decided to join Aewyre in the quest to find what happened to his father? Well.. Lhiannah joined because she wanted an adventure, Worick joined because he had to keep Lhiannah safe (she's a princess) so both abandon their kingdom to go the land of evil... Quenestil knew Aewyre and joined because they are friends, leaving his own people in the mountains, Babaki joined because Quenestil saved his life in the past, so he also left the elves eahan of the mountains. Taislin robbed the group and joined because they invited him to join... Slayra, and other two eahanoir, basically got attacked by Quenestil (by basically no reason other than they where there), and got captured, being a prisoner for a while and eventually deciding to join in on the adventure (again totally abandoning her people and not even caring that the other two that were with her where killed). So... I feel that their reasons to join up are very shallow... and their reasons for staying in the group are even more confusing.
When the group is in a good mood they have a very good dynamic and it's fun to see their interactions. But most of the time there's some beef between some elements of the group... and this is where it doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I just don't understand people...
Lets take Lhiannah for example, she's a warrior princess that doesn't need anyone's help, she defends woman and seems to look down upon people that don't respect others. She almost immediately has problems with Aewyre because he basically "goes" with any woman that appears in front of him, also having problems with every woman that they come across for the same reason that they are all mindless beings with an urge to get the protagonist to date them. She even looks down upon a woman that made the protagonist "settle down" (and that's an entire new problem... I'll explain later). And then... after almost an entire book of criticizing Aewyre, she has the brilliant idea of not wearing pants at a party, accepting the protagonist's challenge for a drinking game while saying something like "If you think that you can make me drunk and have sex with me you are very mistaken." and then, obviously getting drunk and ending up having sex with him... What kind of character is this? And then after the act she's back to being even more mad at him... makes no sense in my head. But even refusing to talk to him for long periods of time, she never even shows any signs of not being loyal to the protagonist's objective.
At a certain point there's a woman (one of many) that grasps the protagonist's heart and manages to make him settle down and give up on his quest... before the middle of the book... obviously is not going to end well. So the group frees her by defeating an evil being that basically enslaved a town... a few days after being defeated said evil being returns (obviously... no one ever checks if he's dead) more powerful than before and the group fight's him again. For the sole reason of "It's my time to die because i'm in the way of the plot", this young woman decided to jump to the middle of the fight completely unarmed with open arms when the protagonist and his group are struggling to defeat their enemy... Well she dies immediately (obviously) but "that" gives the protagonist the rage and strength to finally defeat the enemy. It's a shame... she was a good lass... if only she had 1/4 of a brain, they where going to win anyway. But oh well she was in the way of the plot. After this the protagonist, instead of giving her a burial where her family could pay their respects (I'm sure the city had a graveyard), decides to take her body and give her a special burial with the protection of the God of War basically. Because they truly loved each other... basically knowing one another for one or two weeks and simply having a lot of activity in the bed.
So, in order for her grave to be under the protection of said God, they have to do this wonderful "side-quest" were they have to retrieve a gauntlet (hence the name of the book), and here we are half way into the book. And the second half of it is the completion of this side quest, for the sake of a grave of the protagonist's greatest love... (don't worry he's just sad for a few chapters until he's grabbing maids and, as I exemplified above, ending up in bed with Lhiannah and being quite amused by it).
I think that I've more or less transited the general idea of what are the problems with the book, in my opinion. There are other instances, like when we are introduced to another species, the drahreg, evil creatures that do evil things, have dark skin, dark blood and... they're Orcs, no need for more description. So when these creatures capture the group... their first instinct is to put their hands on Lhiannah and start touching her everywhere? Basically attempting to rape her (I lost count to the amount of times that Lhiannah was in a similar position). And I have nothing against a character getting (or almost getting) rapped in a story, if it's an action that will improve the plot or a character's development, then it can contribute for the progression of the story and create an interesting problem for the characters to overcome. But it would need to be done with some sense, and the problem here (for me) are the drahreg, why would a species different from humans, that despises humans and that eats them like cattle... why would they attempt to touch and rape a human? If an explanation was given in a "Goblin Slayer" style, like the drahregs not having females of their own and reproducing by impregnating other species, then I would understand that it had a purpose. But nothing like this is explained... they are doing it because... well because the rest of the group is tied up right there and someone needs to be so mad that they break out of their ropes and save her... that's why.
So this is my major issue with the book, things like what I've described above are in almost every chapter. At one point near the end, the group meets a group of soldiers loyal to Lhiannah... then they walk away from said group for seven weeks in the opposite direction of where said soldiers where going. And then, the group gets involved in a battle, already in another region of the world and in a remote place... out of nowhere these same soldiers appear shouting "For the princess!" and saving the day. Like... how the hell did they know where to find them in the middle of nowhere after seven weeks without contact? Does the princess have a chip and they where tracking her via GPS? Or is it the magic equivalent? But if it is the magic equivalent to a GPS, then the chapter where they first meet these soldiers makes no sense at all... because they payed someone to know where she was.
Oh well this is already getting way too long. The book as many many problems, but maybe it's just me, I nick pick a lot and details are very important to me. Ah... one more funny thing, when I open the book I see a cool hand drawn map of the world, I always appreciate when books have a map to help the reader locate the story and characters. And this also shows that the author planned at least some of the remaining parts of the story, since the map as the major cities, mountains, rivers, forests, roads... roads... I can see a road starting on the city where our protagonist lived, if i follow that road with my finger it can take me right to the border of Asmodeon! Why on earth are the characters not following the road then? They are literally going by the middle of nowhere... actually they seemed to be further away at the end of the book than at the start of it! It's not like all these other kingdoms where the road passes are Mordor... it's human kingdoms no? Just take the damn road there!
I'm going to stop for now. If I new nothing about the author I would give this book a 2/5... but considering that it was written when he was a kid, and considering that it is one of the only original fantasy series written in Portuguese I'll give it a 3. It's not like I hate the book, I wish that I could write a book like this one and receive at least half the praise that this one did. So in the end I look up to Filipe Faria as almost a father to Portuguese literary fantasy. I hope that the other books improve a bit... there's still six books to go, and I ear rumors that a new one just started being written.
Thank you for anyone that took their time reading this. Remember that this is just my opinion, I recommend that you get the book and give it a read yourself to know more... maybe i'm being very unfair.
Thank you for anyone that took their time reading this. Remember that this is just my opinion, I recommend that you get the book and give it a read yourself to know more... maybe i'm being very unfair.
