In the labyrinth of exposure
The Children of Pure Blood in their author’s dreams are certainly to become a multi-threaded series set in a large, complex and well-drawn world, and thus something like A Song of Ice and Fire , Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time . In my opinion, this is a desirable aspiration, because few authors – especially in Poland – want to get involved in inventing historical and cultural details for their work to an extent that goes far beyond the momentary needs of the plot. But although the aspirations are noble, the performance is somewhat lame.
While detail is to some extent an advantage in itself, it still needs to be properly stated. Otherwise, instead of experiencing a crazy adventure in a fantastic land, we begin to feel like we are in a long lecture. Unfortunately, the Four Fingers face just such a problem. For the vast majority of the time (about 2/3), the novel has great difficulty maintaining at least a tolerable pace of action – it managed to engage me only in the finale, and I do not consider myself an excessively demanding reader.
Tired with lengthy descriptions, not particularly interesting “genre scenes” introducing additional heroes or trying to give depth to those mentioned earlier, barely by name, as well as side threads taking place in other corners of the presented world, which in the first volume are only a germ of some events that are likely to gain meaning in the future. In theory, these additions should be enjoyable, because they make the whole story more complete and predict an increase in the scale of the story, but in practice they distract attention and slow down the development of the already sluggish action.
More specifically, we are actually dealing with four story threads divided into interdependent pairs. The first pair are the fates of the boys prepared for the Blood Ceremony in the mysterious fortress in Hrothgar and the army of the gods departing from Ragnarok to invade the ruling Masters. The second pair is the regicide in Actajon and the political marriage of the son of the ruler of Khorasan, who is most likely responsible for the attack. All this is associated with the introduction of four independent action locations, each of which is equipped with its own protagonists, through which we can follow the course of events.
This is where further problems arise. First of all, there is no balance here – Hrothgar’s plot is clearly in the foreground, but it does not work for him at all, because here the scenes are the most long. Ragnarok jumps to the background, being an unambiguous complement to the events in the fortress, but ultimately becomes just a pretext to explain who the Gods are in this world and outline the figure of the General, i.e. Cabron Cal Zaga (by the way – a nice name, no luck! in the Spanish-speaking market …). The second pair of plots, on the other hand, is completely third-story, receiving much less “screen time” and not directly linking to the story’s core. On the one hand, they are more dynamic, on the other hand, they are simply irritating, giving the impression of being completely out of context, unnecessary interference.
A nice main character who is easy to identify with? Forget it!
One of the most bizarre features of this book is, in my opinion, the creation of the protagonists. For some reason, almost all the characters we follow the action with our eyes are… horrible beeches. Ymir, the unwritten leader of the Hrothgar boys, is an arrogant, impetuous pride who notoriously mocks his friends and tries to dominate his surroundings at all costs – he immediately associates himself with the typical school bully from American youth series. Even when he is not busy playing a tough guy, he is consumed by “dreams of power”, that is, dreams of being a great warrior and going through extraordinary adventures. A very similar impression is made by Blossi, the prince of Actajon, who unexpectedly becomes the direct heir to the throne, which cancels his plans for a career in the military so far, in the ranks of the elite Tower Rangers to be exact. So we observe how an angry, knighted bastard must – against his will – begin to deal with the complexities of the politics and management of the kingdom. Both of these gentlemen are quite difficult to like, both because of their unpleasant appearance and their almost childish fascination with war and the display of physical strength.
It doesn’t get any better anyway. The aforementioned Cabron Cal Zag is a calculating rogue who becomes a venerable White Lord (the equivalent of a nobleman in Ragnarok) only when someone of higher status looks at his hands. On a daily basis, he only thinks about shady business in the port district, casual sex and other hedonistic pleasures, taken from life with a pinch of blasé cynicism. In the last thread, during the wedding ceremony of the heir from Khorasan, we will be accompanied by Baron Xevioso, who seems to be something halfway between Cal Zag and Lord Varys , known from A Song of Ice and Fire . That is, no less, no more, rich and amoral arrogant, but remaining beyond the spotlight and preferring to pull strings from hiding, through his ubiquitous network of trusted contacts.
Of course, in each of them you can find some minor features that can slightly improve their image, but none of the protagonists are very nice, nor are they a classic “blank slate”, which is used by many creators starting an extensive series. What’s most interesting, reading, I was not able to say whether Masłowski deliberately uses such heroes to play on the nose of threadbare clichés and enter into a polemic with the reader about the first impression of these characters in later volumes, or whether he writes them in this way “accidentally” without realizing that they may be off-putting to the recipient.
A breeze of the past era and narrative freaks
The creation of such protagonists, in combination with a few other procedures, which I will tell about in a moment, made me feel more and more that the Four- Fingers had arisen somewhere between successive sets of Conan the Barbarian’s adventures, and then spent several dozen years in a forgotten safe to come out to light today daily. Masłowski’s world is filled to the brim with male characters (in the novel there is exactly one woman with more than a third role), who most of the time deal with the metaphorical – or completely literal – flexing of their muscles.
This can be seen in the internal reflections of the characters and in the dialogues sometimes spiced with a slightly barracks humor. So there is a lot of scuffle about who will turn out to be the bigger badass and will temporarily dictate the conditions, there are jokes by Hrothgar’s adolescents about the tits of this or that servant, there is also a considerable dose of self-centeredness and treating other people objectively. I am not suggesting that this is the general overtone of the whole work, because such attitudes can be found in specific characters, not in the narrative or descriptions itself, but in the Four-Toed people behaving in this way, there are very many people.
And while we’re at the narrative, I couldn’t help but mention the – in my opinion – very bizarre way of conducting it in some scenes. Several times in the pages of the book, the author uses an unusual procedure of smoothly shifting the perspective we follow from one character to another, without any interruption or other warning. Well, we enter the room with a character, “hearing” her thoughts, in the following paragraphs this point of view gradually disappears, imperceptibly turning into a dry, objective description of events, and then we realize that now we are watching the continuation of the same scene with our eyes participant other than at the beginning, and now we have access to his thoughts. In this case, it was also difficult for me to determine whether it was due to carelessness or whether Masłowski was doing it on purpose wanting to give your style a more extraordinary character. Anyway, the end result was quite confusing for me and I didn’t like it very much.
The final, like a parachute, opened at the last minute
I don’t think I will express it more vividly. If it weren’t for the final hundred pages, I would have found this novel completely indigestible. Somehow, however, the Four Fingers leave the long-awaited straight in the finale, breaking free from the shackles of sluggish exposure and descriptions of insignificant events. Then I actually got involved in the story and started turning the pages a little faster, with more enthusiasm. The very solution of the threads at the moment does not bring you to your knees – because most twists effectively spoil the description on the back cover – but at least the action is gaining momentum, and some of the events seem to promise quite an interesting continuation in the next parts of the series. I keep my fingers crossed for the second volume of Children of Pure Blood he kept that quality and did not fall back into the stagnation of the first chapters.
