Sometimes it’s better not to be special – a review of the book “Kingdom of Souls”

The Kingdom of Souls is the first volume of the series by Rena Barron. Although the opening pages, outlining the protagonist, may seem very “youthful”, we will quickly find out that we are in fact exploring a dark and dangerous world, full of lies, half-truths and disturbing unknowns. All it takes is one false move, trusting one wrong person, and a catastrophic avalanche of events cannot be stopped. Embittered and confused, Arrah has very little time to understand this and ripen to the right decisions.

In the eyes of an outcast

At the very beginning, we are informed that the protagonist stands out from her peers and has a big problem with this fact, trying to make a good face for a bad game. Although she comes from a family of powerful and respected shamans, which makes her somewhat of a special treatment and high hopes for her, Arrah still shows no trace of magical abilities. These, as is well known, manifest themselves no later than the age of sixteen – if they do not, a given person will never have them again. Or at least not in the traditional, safe way.

When the last year of contractual youth begins, and thus the last chance to harness magic, the girl basically has no hope of success. Each subsequent attempt backfires, and Arrah grows increasingly frustrated, bitter, and convinced that her life is not going to change for the better. The high position of her family – both among the tribal shamans on the father’s side and in the community of Tamar city, thanks to the function performed by the mother – contrary to appearances, does not help at all. The Little Priestess, as her dad affectionately calls her, constantly feels like an infestation of the family and a walking disappointment, realizing that without magic she will never follow in the footsteps of any of her honorable ancestors. Moreover, does not allow her to forget that she Ka- Priestess Arti, every step of presenting a daughter indifference or poorly concealed contempt.

The already unpleasant situation of the girl gets even worse when mysterious kidnappings begin in Tamara, and an almost palpable aura of fear and the impending catastrophe hangs over the whole city. Recognizing the slowness and helplessness of the city authorities in the face of an undefined but growing threat, Arrah decides to take matters into his own hands – the hands of a “futility” tormented by complexes, who, however, sees more than others and knows what to do. As long as she has the courage to pay the price …

There will be no wand waving or stupid spells in this… novel

In this text I have already mentioned this and that several times about bearing the costs of certain decisions and the rather dark atmosphere of the story. What is going on? The very structure of the presented world, and most of all the rules of magic, around which everything revolves around here, is much less “pleasant” than in most of the contemporary youth fiction propositions. The process of magic in the Kingdom of Souls it is not easy, colorful and spectacular, on the contrary – it is … dirty. I think I can describe it metaphorically. Here, shamans – as well as other magicians – drink potions from herbs mixed with human blood, tattoo enchanted signs on themselves, summon the spirits of the dead, fall into narcotic trances, impose curses through rituals, and even treat demons with hungry mortals. Anyway, all this may look even worse – when people without natural talent reach for magic powers, they have to pay for them with their own health, and even with their lives. This is also how the so-called charlatans, prematurely aged and deformed unfortunates who have been maimed by magic.

This somewhat macabre vision of communing with mystical forces is by no means a personal invention of the author. Rena Barron, a black writer raised in Alabama, deliberately searched for inspiration for the belief and magic system created here in voodoo traditionsas well as the folklore of the West African peoples from which her family comes. These influences can be easily felt while reading, either by reading the descriptions of the functioning of the tribal communities and shamanism presented there, or by paying attention to such a prosaic fact as the clear dominance of dark skin among the characters. Personally, I liked this aspect of the novel very much; it offered a breath of freshness against the background of the hackneyed “European Middle Ages with the addition of dragons”. While at times you have to put a little more effort into understanding the nuances of this universe, it gives it its own character and charm, which made me more eager to explore them.

Teenage ills and insurmountable enemies

Here, unfortunately, I must move on to a critique of the two greatest, at least in my opinion, flaws of the Kingdom of Souls. First, for nearly half of the novel, the main character is simply annoying. Her internal monologues are frequent and extensive, but unfortunately each time they concern one of three topics – a difficult relationship with a dry mother, fantasies and fears related to her teenage love for Rudjek, the son of the vizier, or regret over the lack of magic talent. Of course, it is understandable that a young girl’s life can revolve around a family situation, trying to get the attention of an attractive boy and looking for her place in the world. However, this does not change the fact that Arrah does not come to any interesting conclusions in these thoughts, but only reflects on various failures and worries, which quite quickly begins to tire and unnecessarily slow down the action. How much can you talk about the same even in your own head? Fortunately, many more pressing problems appear later in the book, which distracts the protagonist from these recurring boomerang issues.

My second serious reservation concerns the way of building antagonists and a very strange approach to the scale of events. As already mentioned, Arrah definitely does not start his adventure from a position of strength. Initially, she has almost no useful talents, and is quite poorly versed in the realities of the depicted world – she has to learn a lot of things from other characters or by laboriously combining facts. So from the very beginning we have a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. Therefore, it can be expected that the protagonist will slowly develop, gaining new abilities and slowly gaining strength and self-confidence, facing not very demanding opponents and using the help of more competent characters. Is it really so? Absolutely not!

Already the first of the enemies revealed in the novel turns out to be far beyond the reach of someone like Arrah, completely dominating it both in terms of available resources and magical power. Even at this stage, the girl, logically speaking, simply has no chance, and the sequence of events that follows in the following chapters seems very unbelievable and feels like the so-called plot armor . If we even slightly tweaked the realism of the described situations, the main character would rather not live to see the second half of the plot. As if that were not enough, it only gets worse. Behind the “first evil” lurks an even greater and more powerful “second evil”, reaching the rank of a deity and having almost unlimited possibilities. It is similar to the “arms race”, straight from manga shounen, in which the older antagonist had a murderous blow capable of sinking an entire continent, so that the next opponent must be able to destroy entire planets in one fell swoop in order to be able to beat the previous one. And, once again, the author tries to convince us that the protagonist has a chance to win in such a clash, adding in her favor a small ex-machina and an immortal excuse that “the evil does not appreciate the opponent and does not fight with full strength”. The multiple use of this second maneuver within one novel seems to me at least ridiculous, and not in a positive sense.

It’s good, but will it get better?

Regardless of the stumbles mentioned above, the universe and heroes of the Kingdom of Souls certainly have a lot of potential. Despite certain glitches, the novel reads quite quickly, and the more rapid fragments (those devoid of teenage complaints) can effectively draw you in. The first volume is just the beginning of this story, and the events in its finale suggest that the continuation may take a slightly different and perhaps even more interesting direction. With these slightly mixed feelings, therefore, I am taking to the second volume – The Reaper of Souls – which I will write about soon!