"Crónicas de Allaryia: Os Filhos do Flagelo", by Filipe Faria. | And a little rant about "dumbing down characters".

Just last week I finished reading the second book in the “Crónicas de Allaryia” series, named “Os Filhos do Flagelo” by Filipe Faria. I must say that this book was a considerable improvement on the first one, the plot makes a lot more sense without the annoying side-quests and the characters are a lot more developed. I feel that the writing style has improved, but some of the parts (especially when the characters scream in dialog) feel a bit too exaggerated to me. But maybe that’s just my preference, I prefer when the narrator explains how the character is screaming, instead of a graphical representation of said scream [for example: “- OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”, and things like that.]

Warning: The text below contains spoilers and a fair amount of sarcasm.
 

                This book follows two stories, (in the end of the first book, the main cast of characters separate into two groups), so we basically have alternated chapters, one for one group and the next for the other. This worked quite well because, if at one point I got bored of one of the groups I would still push myself to read the chapter about the group that I’m less interested in, so that I could reach the next part of said groups story. Occasionally the author gave me a treat, instead of alternating between groups each chapter, there would be a chapter about the brother of the Main Character, that was pretty much abandoned at the beginning of the first book. In these chapters we are presented with the politics of the realm, getting a chance to observe Aewyre’s brother ruling his kingdom. Thus the world building in this book is much deeper than in the first, the world is starting to feel like a place that could exist, instead of a place created for the main characters to play around and save from evil. For example, I found it really interesting the way that the “thuragars” bury their dead, and I hope that the following books expand on this race’s culture. But back to the main stories. Both are interesting but, at the same time it becomes a bit predictable, it was quite easy for me to see an action coming, sometimes many chapters in advance. There are, just like in the first book, quite a lot of clichés around, not all of them are bad, but all together it becomes a bit too much.

                Another big problem, in my opinion, are the fighting sequences, that became “better” but “worse”.  It could be considered “better” for a reader that enjoys this kind of description, and “worse” for a reader that does not. The fighting sequences are many, usually one per chapter, and they are very detailed, too much detailed in my opinion. I guess that this is something that this author likes to do a lot. Since the first book the descriptions became more detailed and coherent in terms of flow of the action itself. But is it still way too long in my opinion, some fights take more than five pages, and there’s a chapter with two sequential fights, so that should make more than ten pages of detailed description of fights. What makes it worse is that the reader knows who’s going to win. The fights are well choreographed, almost looks like a movie script, but the result of the fight can be seen from the start… and, if our heroes are losing, worry not… either some reinforcements arrive deus ex machina style, or the villains suddenly become brainless and forget how to fight and basically let the heroes win with a scratch or two, sometimes very hurt, but we know that they’ll recover fast. On the opposite side of this argument, the author surprised me with the death of one of the most important characters! And I was even more surprised that the author didn’t cheat to, somehow, bring that character back. It seems that he’s really dead, unless the author brings him back in one of the following five book, which I hope he doesn’t, let his death have some meaning. At the same time, the character’s death was completely predictable and the character was literary killed by the author. The author made said character and his companions make completely dumb decisions (that no one with half a brain would do), and eventually those make this character sacrifice himself so that others could escape. So, I’m happy that we got a sense of danger for the characters, they can die, and I hope that some more will die in the following books, but I also hope that their deaths make more sense (or are more credible).

Now on to the chapter were this character dies. Well it’s pretty obvious, since the beginning of the first book where the character Lhiannah is introduced, that she is and will be the main character’s (Aewyre) main love interest (even though that’s an entire other problem). So, when we discover, on a certain chapter, that this other character (Babaki the antroleo – lion man creature) loves Lhiannah, we get a really visible red flag that he’s not going to live long. The entire first arc of this group of characters is focused around Quenestil and Babaki trying to find and rescue Slayra. From the start the two rescuers don’t seem to stop to think for a single minute, getting themselves in the worst possible problems. They arrive to a city controlled by eahanoir (drak elves / night elves… whatever you want to call them), and they don’t want to stand out, so they devise a formidable plan! When entering the city every visitor is directed to a lane that corresponds to their interests, there’s a lane for the “pleasure houses”, a lane for “merchants”, a lane for the fighting arenas…  guess which lane they choose? What could possibly go wrong? Obviously when they get to the arena, Babaki is separated from his friend and forced to fight to the death in the arenas while Quenestil watches impotent and regretful. Babaki is very shy, but he had plenty of opportunities to explain to the people that were processing him into the fighting lists that he didn’t come to fight, but just to watch and bet on the fights… and Quenestil also had plenty of time (seems like hours) to get up from his sit and go talk to someone to get his friend out of the arena before it came the time for Babaki to fight… but nah… they can’t call attention to themselves shhhh keep quiet and let it happen, nothing could possibly go wrong. Everything goes wrong, Babaki is forced to fight and kill some opponents in the arena, then trying to escape with Quenestil by attacking the guards of the arena and both get captured and caught in the end… so much for “not standing out”, great plan it was, going the merchant or pleasure house route would decently be much worse…

Anyway, jumping forward a ton of chapters (like more than half the book), to the point where all tree (Quenestil (wounded), Slayra (unconscious) and Babaki (very very wounded, to the point that he should not really still be alive, but hey… I’m no expert on how much a lion-humanoid can take, let’s not judge) are finally making their escape from that dreadful city. So, they manage to get a carriage and make the son of some powerful noble in the city hostage to drive the carriage. So far so good! The plan is decent, they intend to force this hostage to act as their master and so pass by the guards without being stopped, since time is on their side and no one still knows that they took him hostage (they even went after and finished off a witness). At this point Babaki and Slayra are inside the carriage (unseen from anyone outside) and Quenestil is outside with a dagger pinned against the hostage so that he doesn’t betray them (there’s even the typical treat of “if you don’t do as I say I’ll kill you, so behave”. Everything is going well, was I thinking, for once the plan is solid and credible, and if they all escape it would be a legit escape by my standards, a bit cliché, but still valid in this situation. But what the author gave me was the opposite of cliché. Babaki needed to die, so the author lowered the character’s intelligence to -20 for the next couple of pages. The hostage took them safely to the main plaza next to the city gates, until there no one tried to stop them! The plan was working! And then Quenestil decides to throw the hostage off the carriage and drive it himself, saying something like: “You have done good so far, now get lost!”. And guess where they arrive next? Yep… the gatehouse, where the guards proceed to stop them and ask them a few questions… (woah, I wonder if that hostage would have been useful now, if only they didn’t get rid of him in the last paragraph). Meanwhile, inside the carriage, Babaki is giving his goodbye speech to an unconscious Slayra (even the character knows that the author really wants to get rid of him… yeah ok he has a barbed dagger in his belly but he’s doing well so far, I bet that, if they manage to leave the city, his friends would find a way to save him). The guards do the usual “gate guard questions” and actually don’t seem very interested in our characters, to me they actually had a decent chance of escaping even without the hostage, those guards were a bit oblivious of the situation… But Babaki must die! So the author lowers the character’s intelligence (again – not poor Slayra, she’s unconscious anyway), and Quenestil is the one that actually starts making bad faces to the guards and basically provoking them. So obviously Babaki jumps out of the carriage with a menacing roar and attacks the guards, removing that dagger from his own guts (so much that his intestines come out with it) and fighting to the death so that his friends could escape! And so he dies… in a completely avoidable situation. Even worse, (I’m not done yet and this was not even the main point that I intended to talk about in this review), they had a carriage pulled by two strong horses, the gate was wide open, one guard was interrogating Quenestil and another was standing in front of the carriage (I think it was one, but even if it was two, same issue), our heroes decide to fight, attracting more guards and sacrificing Babaki to escape. Quenestil escapes via the gate with Slayra by cutting loose one of the horses from the carriage and riding it. So… they were in a carriage pulled by two strong horses, in front of them there are two guards maximum… and they decide to get off the carriage and fight at the gate sacrificing one and escaping with one horse… *sigh*. If the author simply had Quenestil make the carriage go forward, the guards would have no way to stop them. Would they be pursued? Yes of course, since they ditched the hostage that could have gotten them out possibly without problems, yes, they would be pursued… but they end up being pursued anyway and having to ride for days without stopping. “Oh but if they had left with the carriage without fighting they would have limited mobility and they would have been caught, they can’t go off road with a carriage.” Yes absolutely, but Quenestil made remarkable progress in science and discovered that it is possible to cut horses loose from a carriage. And then they would have two horses, one for Babaki and one for Quenestil and Slayra!

*Takes a deep breath*… Anyway, my point with all of this is that I’m happy that the author showed us that his characters can die, but I’m not very satisfied that the character was literally forced to die. It ruins the idea that Babaki died heroically when the characters clearly make the worse possible decisions without making any sense, these are characters that made good decisions before, it’s clear that they were "dumbed down" so that this death could occur. This happened before, in the first book, but not to a relevant character (since the moment that this character was introduced, it was obvious that she needed to die), I ranted about it in the first book’s review. This finally leads me to what I aimed to talk about when I started writing this review.

                I would like to write a bit about what I call “dumbing down characters”. Along a story the characters develop, with each chapter the reader becomes more familiar with them, be them the main heroes, some side character, a main villain, or a side villain. Taking this book (and the previous one) as examples, and having into account that the author loves to describe every single detail of a fight, the reader knows the character’s abilities, we see them get better at fighting and thinking, sometimes we see their full power (for example some villains), sometimes we see them gain new abilities! Let me take, as an example, two characters that have “grown” along the two books. Aewyre is our protagonist, he has always been good with a sword, but he’s been improving more and more! And his sword is magical, at one point in this second book, he manages to use some of his sword’s magic to slice the air and cut off the bodies of two enemies in half. Aewyre is learning and improving his skills a lot! Another important character, and villain is Hazabel the Harahan (basically an evil creature that eats livers, can merge herself into the shadows, is very physically strong and looks like a woman), she is actually introduced to us in the first book while seducing Aewyre (and succeeds, it’s not that hard after all, as long as it’s female he will fall for it). Anyway, she manages to get pregnant from him etc etc and then we see her murder a family with ease, we are shown how strong she is, gutting people left and right like it’s marshmallows. Her main objective is to steal Aewyre’s sword, and then her personal goal is to kill him, but evil creatures can not touch that sword without getting burned (she still can use something to grab the sword, as long as she doesn’t touch it). Well to start it makes no sense that her master sends her (and another character actually) to steal a sword that neither can touch… bit of a flawed plan I must say, but ok, she can wrap it up in something and then carry it. But let me get to the example. At a certain chapter, towards the end of this book, Aewyre is alone in his room laying in his bed, resting and thinking about stuff (aka sad that Babaki died), meanwhile his companions are downstairs (this is like a tavern/inn) eating dinner and such. The group downstairs gets attacked, and at the same time, Hazabel sneaks into Aewyre’s room via the window. Aewyre’s sword is on the other side of the room and he can not see in the dark, so he has no idea of the danger near him. Quick reminder: Hazabel’s objective is to steal the sword and kill Aewyre. So what happens? Hazabel jumps on top of Aewyre (remember she is super strong) and starts punching and scratching him, he fights back. She gets hurt, he gets hurt and they keep wrestling. Meanwhile one of Aewyre’s friends enters the room to help him, it’s Lhiannah (which, at this point, is basically already his main love), and she has armor and her own sword! At this point, suddenly Hazabel turns to her and sakes off Aewyre. Lhiannah is quickly overpowered and gets knocked down, while Hazabel keeps wounding her greatly. Meanwhile on the other side of the room, (btw it’s a really small room, the inn keeper said something about that in that same chapter) Aewyre gets back up and sees his love being killed by that evil super strong creature! His sword is nearby, the room is really small, so he picks to sword up and hits that monster in… oh nevermind, that’s what the semi-intelligent Aewyre would do, that character is not here! Here the author gives us the dumber version of Aewyre! So let me restart: Aewyre gets back up and sees his love being killed by that evil super strong creature! His sword is nearby, the room is really small, so he decided to punch and kick the hell out of Hazabel! The fight ends with Hazabel escaping by the window, Aewyre somewhat wounded, Lhiannah completely K.O., and Aewyre’s magical sword, Ancalach, still resting against the wall of the room. Then Aewyre proceeded to pick up his mighty sword and go downstairs to help kill some of the shitty thugs that are fighting is friends…

And so both characters, Aewyre and Hazabel, were completely dumbed down for the sake of “the hero must survive for another battle” (possibly until the end of the series), and “the villain must survive and be a threat until the time comes were she must be defeated”. This is what bothers me the most in this book series so far. I can forgive a lot, even though it bothers me, like when armor becomes paper, or weapons become “lightsabers”, not everyone knows how weapons and armor work, and its fantasy, so I try to let that pass… a bit. But this is simply too annoying. The author makes the protagonist grow in power but then, as to create tension, he removes some of his power when fighting a villain that the reader knows is powerful. But then the author doesn’t want the protagonist to die in this fight… so the villain must also be dumbed down so that the protagonist can overtake him without access to his full strength! So both hero and villain get dumbed down or nerfed to the point where you have two physically capable, cunning and smart characters, saying stuff like “I’m going to kill you this time.” and then proceeding to punch and kick each other until one runs away, and the hero always wins. This leads to what I decided to call the “Team Rocket syndrome".

Taking the scene that I described as an example, Hazabel had the full advantage on that situation, she got the jump on Aewyre, he was unarmored and unarmed… and we have seen her gut people and break then in half with her bare hands before. And even if she was not capable of such, she jumped on him, she gave the first few blows, punches and scratches… if she had a knife, a butter knife, a fork, even a spoon, she could have ended him immediately, she is super strong, she could have ended him with her hands right there. But she was dumbed down, “the protagonist must not die now”, the author says. This, for me, ruins the entire book. It didn’t happen once or twice, these two opponents have fought and failed to kill each other multiple times, always ending up with a hero win and an (un)said: “next time I’ll get you”. It takes away the tension from the story when these things happen. And there’s still more five books to go! I really hope this improves. I gave this book a 3/5, it’s not a bad read, at some points I was really enjoying it, especially when it comes to world building or the plot was becoming more and more intriguing. But then something like this happens, usually during a five pages fighting sequence that I almost feel like skipping (not because it’s bad, it’s technically well written, but it’s not engaging nor tense, you know who wins, if a character is in danger there comes a flying arrow, spell, dagger to save him).

                Overall the book is decent, no pointless side quests and the plot moved forward a lot, the objective of the protagonist and his friends is to get to Asmodeon to search for his father etc etc, in the first book it felt like they actually went backwards for a long time. In this book the companions made it almost all the way to their objective, I would say that they made it about 90% of the way to Asmodeon, they are right next to it… now what worries me is the end of the book and the knowledge that the series has a total of seven books. In the end of the book the protagonist basically says that he’s going to go after the group that attacked him in the inn, before proceeding with his quest. This is the end of book two, there’s seven books, I really really hope that the next four books are not about the group “sidequesting” and then on the last book they go back to the main plot… I really hope not. If it does I don’t think that any improvements on the problems mentioned above will be able to keep me interested.

Again, all this ranting is not me attacking the author. I wish I could write as he does and earn as much respect has he has! This book was written in the beginning of this century, many standards might have changed since then, I have changed since 2002. Maybe if I read it while I was younger I would enjoy it more. At least I would not be so bothered about some details. I think that all reading is about learning, I’m absorbing what I like and learning what I don’t enjoy, so that I can mold that into my own projects.