***SPOILERS***
The story follows Jionat and Rufus as
they build friendship and trust with each other and Fae as they encounter magic
whilst escaping political intrigue. This novel draws heavily from Celtic
mythology for its creatures and themes. Jionathan
is a Prince of Hermatia, son of King Thestian and his second wife Lady Eliane
of the Delphi ‘cursed’ with sensations and the sight. Rufus is a magi, someone
who channels the powers of the gods to perform magic; his last name is ‘Merle’,
a nice reference to the great magician Merlin. This is especially appropriate
because Rufus is hilarious and Merlin in myths is often described as a joker.
Some
Notes
Perhaps the most striking feature of
this book is the plethora of beautiful, vivid descriptions. From the first two
pages the audience is gifted with ‘darkness feasted’ and ‘shadows snapping at
their heels’. These are consistent throughout the novel (unlike other works in
which description peters out as the action strides in). Indeed, I could fill
pages and pages with such quotations. I will limit myself to one more. Instead
of stating the city was as familiar as the back of his hand, Rufus said it was
‘as familiar as his bedroom’ which was a pleasant, creative way to shake up the
cliché.
Here are some miscellaneous topics.
There was
one concept that jumped out at me. Not because it was inventive but because it
happened in my own life. Rufus mentions his mother told him to draw nightmares
in order to make them stop. My mother told me the same thing and I have never
met anyone else who did this, so to see it in a book caught me off guard.
Rufus has
an amazing relation with his father Torrin, full of familiarity, teasing and
honesty (even if Rufus is not immediately forthcoming). It was a bit odd,
though, because Torrin switched between formal and informal speech patterns.
Usually when people adopt a more formal or informal pattern than normal, it’s
for a specific and instantly recognisable reason. Torrin’s switching was
without cause.
Zachery
leads the Night Patrol, made of magi who transform into monsters to enforce the
capital’s nightly curfew. The main reason, however, seemed be to keep Jionat
from fleeing the city. We also get a few sections from Zachery’s perspective.
In one of them, he makes a continual fuss about covering his nakedness from his
housekeeper Heather. Yet simultaneous, he makes a fuss that he has nothing to
hide from her and that she’s seen everything. It made me want to shout “Pick
one!” at Zachery.
Faeries
When Jionat finally flees the city
into the forest, he saves Fae from a team of bandits led by Bruatar. By the
time Rufus catches up, the boys decide to continue Fae’s mission of retrieving
Princess Aurora of Bethean.
Fae
is a Cat Sidhe, a kind of faerie. Yes, a faerie called Fae: so original. (It
hurts to not spell it like ‘fairy’ but ‘faerie’ isn’t incorrect. I’ll just have
a small strop by myself.) Anyway, in the Hermantia Cycle, a Cat Sidhe is a
faerie with an elven/humanoid form and can shape shift into a horse-sized black
cat with wings. This expands upon Celtic mythology in which a cat sidhe is just
a black cat. A nice touch is that the white chest-patch cat sidhe have in
mythology is also in Hermantia.
Fae
has been tasked to save Aurora from Embarr, a gancanagh. This type of faerie
manipulates lust in order to drain victims of energy, sometimes resulting in
death. Bearing in mind Aurora is a young teenager and Embarr is much older, the
whole lust thing is awfully grim.
The trio
meet Embarr just after Fae debriefs the boys on the manipulation. Jionat
announces this feeling between men s ‘unnatural’ and he finds the experience
highly uncomfortable. Rufus, on the other hand, seem very satisfied. Jionat
even wants to break Embarr’s bones and Rufus says ‘”I’ll gladly hold him
down.”’ (Did I start choking on my cuppa because I snorted at this? Yes, yes I did.)
Embarr
reveals the korrigans (faerie priestesses of Morrigan) stole the princess. The
trio go in to rescue Aurora and, as they descend into the korrigan’s submerged
home, both the korrigans and readers remain ignorant of the true plan. One
initially reads it as a betrayal but finding out this was a ruse made for a
fantastic read. Plus you get heady stuff when Rufus sees the korrigan’s
preparing a spell to cheat death and Rufus was impressed, if not disturbed, to
see a viable immortality spell.
Jionat,
meanwhile fights a red cap. In both the novel and mythology, red caps survive
by soaking their hat in blood: if the blood dries, the red cap dies. I just
wonder how the red cap would have enough fresh blood in the tunnels. The
protagonists make very clear that people very rarely come near the tunnels, let
alone go in. So does the red cap get blood from the korrigans? Are there any
animals living in the cave that are a substitute for human blood?
I have one
more comment for this section. They sit at a campfire to discuss the plan, and
the prose states Rufus sits back down. Yet last we heard, he’d been crouching
at the fire. At no point did it mention he’d stood up. It was an unseemly
transition.
Sarrin
Town
When the characters go to Sarrin in
Bethean, they stay with Rufus’ cousins and uncle Michael. We see a
heart-wrenching scene from Rufus’ past and the author captured the grief with
such excellence. This family is also very formal in speech yet informal in
content.
Sarrin
does wonders for the relations between the three protagonists. They open up
their hearts, thoughts and trust to each other. I think that the rekindling of
Jionat’s closeness with Rufus was handled very well because they’ve both
‘found’ the other. Seeing new strong friendship grow is a privilege, whether
real or fictional. They even make jokes that a few days before would have
crossed the line.
Bruatar
comes to Sarrin to capture Fae, Rufus shares a tender moment with her, saying
‘”I kicked him in the face, if that helps.’” That’s probably the most intimate
and funny piece of violence I’ve ever seen.
When Luca
(Rufus’ cousin) tells the townsfolk to leave to avoid bandits, they comply
straight away. Realistically, it doesn’t matter how much is trusted or
respected you are: people always protest about leaving their homes. Even if
people know a hurricane/earthquake is coming or they can see a raging fire,
they struggle to leave. (Apparently all the people in this world are easily
persuadable. This is neither the first nor last time that persuasion is
instantly accepted.)
Jionat is astounded to see a lesbian
wedding. He comes around to acceptance (thankfully) but he did so a bit too
quickly, especially considering how much he was against the idea before. One
protest (to my amusement and exasperation) was that ‘but then you can marry
your dog’ which was bizarre. There’re massive differences between a human
marrying another human compared to a human marrying a dog. One can’t have
children with dogs and pet-owner relationships are a completely dynamic to a
romantic relationship between two individuals with sentience. So Jionat’s
protest seems absurd. Maybe this is a common protest in the real world? That
thought worries me. It just seems like it was shoehorned into the story.
Reviews:
The Hermatia Cycle (M. E. Vaughan)
The Sons of
Thestian (Book One) 2/2
The Blood
of the Delphi (Book Two) 1/2
The Blood
of the Delphi (Book Two) 2/2
https://frostgriffin.blogspot.com/2019/09/review-blood-of-delphi-hermatia-cycle_28.html
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