When the cage is not even gilded … – a review of the novel “Mojra: Cursed Children of Inayari”

The first volume of Mojryis a real ride without a handlebars, which throws us into the deep water with the very first pages, revealing what a fascinating and dangerous place we have found ourselves in. The title Inayari is a nunnery located in lonely, frosty mountains, near a dead sea that is constantly frozen with ice. Its inhabitants are as much followers and pupils of Mojr as prisoners. Anyone who has hit the walls of the fortress cannot leave it without completing the training, and even then does not regain full freedom, being unable to travel freely or start a family. Life in Inayari is neither easy nor pleasant, and while there are remarkable skills in medicine, combat, assassination, and even runic magic, failure and death are equally likely. Young adepts are aware of the risk, and their mentors do not try to reduce it, because only the best are to survive education. So the atmosphere is somewhat… tense. And all this before the terror is magnified by rumors of horrific experiments conducted in the Forbidden Chambers, and a stranger, mortally wounded man wielding magic appears on the threshold of the university.

Action above all

As the author herself claims through a biographical note placed inside the volume, “in his books he focuses on action scenes, paying special attention to hand-to-hand combat”. Although the fight scenes themselves are not too much and, to be honest, I have not noticed that they were written somehow much better than in competing works (at least of decent quality), Inayari ‘s Cursed Children can not be denied the extremely fast plot and accessible , energetic narrative style.

At some point in reading the whole thing I started to associate a bit with Harry Potter, and not necessarily because of the plot of the secret school of magic. You can feel a similar freedom of telling a pre-established story, along with quite sparingly dosing the reader side plots and scenes that do not push the action forward, while at the same time being based on an interesting and questioning idea for the presented world. In my opinion, Mrs. Rowling’s books were made so popular mainly by these elements, and here the author manages to play on similar notes … and without a bit of falsehood! Similarly, limiting the place of events to the inside of the Inayari Monastery – like spending the entire school year at Hogwarts – created the perfect field for significant interactions between the individual characters, quite natural and, contrary to appearances, unhurried learning about the secrets of this school,

Remember whose eyes you are looking …

Speaking of the main character, it is Rayn – a young, but fully qualified runic priestess. He uses his magical talents primarily to create illusions and medical experiments, the culmination of which is to discover a method to restore life to the recently deceased. Regardless of her interests, she can also take life effectively (as is the case with every Inayari graduate), whether with the help of offensive spells or a set of favorite throwing knives.

Despite her rather broad competences, Rayn is not happy in the monastery, and her position in the hierarchy of this hermetic community remains ambiguous. Numerous talents and the lack of a sadistic disposition, so often visible in other mentors, make her liked most of the adepts, but many priestesses look at her askance due to the unfortunate origin of the woman. Rayn, as the daughter of an assassin, is living proof of her mother breaking one of the fundamental principles of Inayari, which I mentioned in the introduction (prohibition of entering into relationships and starting a family). The punishment for this offense is not only the death of the “traitor”, but also the inalienable stigma imposed on her children, who at birth are forcibly incorporated into the monastery in order to work off the parent’s guilt, and their personal freedoms, especially those relating to leaving the walls of the fortress are limited even more than usual. For this reason, Rayn remains rather aloof, not allowing himself friendships or participation in political games between unofficial factions among priestesses.

However, all this must change, against the wishes of our protagonist, when the so far broken rune of resurrection brings Aiden to life, a young boy endowed with magical abilities very similar to the magic of Rayn herself. This supernatural connection only deepened since this miraculous cure. As unfortunately often happens, many things in the girl’s life start to collapse one after another, and she herself is torn between caring for the adepts, difficult feelings towards Aiden, the need to explore the secrets of the Forbidden Chambers and the desire to learn more about the fate of her family.

… Because you will only see what they see.

As I have already mentioned, the author allows herself to play with perspective here. One of the features of fantasy literature is that it usually serves the reader much larger portions of exposure than other genres, because it must reliably and comprehensively outline a world clearly different from ours. As we spend the lion’s share of the book in Rayn’s head, she is the one who talks and thinks about how the universe works. In this way, we learn about the principles of magic with its limitations, the names and nature of the institutions important for the plot, the balance of forces in the fictional country we are in, as well as the role of religion and the associated pantheon of deities divided into the female group Mojr and the male group – Titans .

And what is so special about it? Well, we are used to trusting both the narrator and the protagonists and treating the information given to us as certainty. Ultimately, all of this is to enable us to grasp the alien universe, isn’t it? The stairs begin when the hero with whose perspective we are connected has incomplete, incorrect or even deliberately falsified information by other characters trying to manipulate him. In the case of the unfortunate Rayn, all these elements pile up completely unnoticed, only to fall on her head at some point in the plot – and therefore on the recipient’s head. I would love to discuss this procedure in more detail, but I’ll stop here because I can’t spoil your fun with spoilers!

Great atmosphere, great debut!

Although, of course, I can fault a few things, such as the embarrassment of some scenes belonging to the romantic plot, or moments of unpleasant informational chaos caused by the procedure that I discussed in the previous paragraph, it does not change the fact that Inayari’s Cursed Children are a really solid position. The idea for the world and the plot, the writing style, the characters’ creations, all are above the average genre, especially in our native literary field, which is especially impressive considering the young age of the author and the fact that it is her first novel. I reached for this title without much enthusiasm and was very positively surprised. I keep my fingers crossed for the next volumes of Mojry they were even better, and I would love to review them for you when they come out!