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A review by nooralshanti
An Elegy of Heroes: The Agartes Epilogues Complete Trilogy by K.S. Villoso
5.0
An Elegy of Heroes is an excellent epic fantasy series with deep characterization, rich, epic world-building, and an expertly woven plot. You will fall in love with these characters, these families, and then you'll have your heart torn out as they're put through dark and dangerous times. It's earned itself a place among my all-time favourite book series.
I've already done reviews for each of the three books in the trilogy: Jaeth's Eye ~~ Aina's Breath ~~ Sapphire's Flight but I also want to share some overall thoughts on the series as a whole in this review.
I'll attempt to do it without spoilers, but really, instead of reading my review you should be going and reading the actual books.
First of all, the author has achieved a level of real-ness that is unrivaled here. Everything from the characters and their interactions and relationships to the different cultures and the magic system serves to make this series so immersive and so immediate and real. I can't get these characters out of my head, because they feel so much like real people, and I just want to take another deep-dive into this world and learn everything about it because it's so rich and well-built.
The series follows several characters who fall into and out of prominence, but there are three main constant characters: Kefier, Sume, and Ylir. Each of these characters has completely different life circumstances and a completely different background that has shaped their lives. They are, generally speaking, normal people who end up bumping into all kinds of magical empire-shifting, world-ending fantasy goings-on and they get involved in it to a certain extent, but they're not the heroes, really, they're just side-characters in the "epic" plot. It's so interesting to be offered a view into how such world-altering events would affect normal people. It's not that it hasn't been done before in fantasy novels, but where we usually get a scene or two from the ordinary person's perspective this trilogy focuses on them and tells the story entirely through their eyes.
That's not to say we don't get to understand the bigger perspective. As the series goes along there are so many reveals and hints and events that show us this vast, realistic world with empires that are crumbling, disturbances in the fabric of the agan (which is like the power that runs through the whole world and lets people do magic), and so much more. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know more about these fictional lands and empires and their different ways of dealign with magic than I do about any other fictional universe and that's without any info-dumps whatsoever! It's amazing how well-written and well-plotted this book is to allow the world-building to be revealed so effortlessly. So if you're still in the first few chapters and you're not sure what the heck is going on don't worry: you'll soon be looking desperately for a map and grinning at little details and sitting there stunned after some insane reveal about some empire or war-lord somewhere.
I know I'm going to love re-reading this series because the hints that foreshadow these reveals are right there from the beginning and on second read I know I'll pick up on so much more detail than I did the first time around and it will be awesome. Just as I re-read the Harry Potter books and LoTR several times I look forward to re-reading this series in the future.
For me, the strongest of the three books was the second one. I took a while to get into the first one and real life took me away from reading it for a while and I still didn't know what was going on or who the characters were. By the time the second one rolled around I was so invested in these characters and knew enough about the world to really love it. This was when I started staying up late and neglecting real life duties in order to continue reading. The third book started a little slower for me and had a bit of love triangle stuff and a few too many intimate scenes that I feel dragged it a bit, but it eventually picked up to a breath-taking pace with lots of action.
Some teeny, tiny nitpicks:
- I tired of the witty banter at the beginning of book 3. It was a bit much and I feel like it made one of the important secondary characters feel a bit less realistic than all the other characters in the story.
- While it was still hundreds of times more nuanced than most mainstream representations I found the representation of the Gasparians was so obviously a cartoonish-representation of Arabs compared to all the other amazing representations of other cultures in the book. As I said, still far above the usual standard and there was nothing actually offensive or anything, just... it wasn't as good as well-done as the other lands/cultures in my personal opinion.
- I really wanted to see more of the Daegian Empire getting what it deserved at the end of the tale. By the time the third book rolled around with all the little hints and interactions we saw with the Empire I was 100% against this empire and wanted to see it crash down after what it had done to so many of the characters and other countries. I get why the author didn't spend more time on this, the story was about the side-characters, not the empires themselves, but I just really wanted to see more of the fate of this empire first-hand.
Lovely little details that made me smile:
- The families in this book. They're not all "perfect" by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it is their realistic imperfections that make it so awesome. I loved the bond between Sume and Oji, Oji and Kefier, and the family that develops around Kefier in book 2, including old Narani, for example. It's not often you see realistic interactions between people of such different ages in fantasy books - or just see realistic old people at all. And of course Kefier and Rosha, this is my favourite thing about the entire series hands-down.
- When Sume tells Arn to take his shoes off. This little moment made me grin. So many authors try so hard to develop different cultures and often end up getting hyper-focused on things that reveal that they really don't get different cultures or worse, they stray into stereotypes. This tiny little detail (among many others, of course) was such a simple little example of how the author gets it. She's writing about different cultures and making them feel so real because she gets how different cultures interact in the real world and the kinds of little differences that can exist.
- The flashbacks. It may seem weird for me to say this because the majority of fantasy books don't handle flashbacks well and they can feel kind of tedious or unnecessary. In this series I was excited when I saw a flashback as they were all so well-done! I'll also add the little asides/interludes to this. They were mostly from the points of view of completely different characters that were not part of the main cast and most of them were from the past or from things written about this time period later or something, but again, I didn't feel annoyed about stepping away from the main "action" and instead found myself looking forward to these.
Overall, this was an excellent fantasy series that you should definitely check out. A must-read for all fantasy fans, in my opinion. Do yourself a favour and go find this series and dive in.
I've already done reviews for each of the three books in the trilogy: Jaeth's Eye ~~ Aina's Breath ~~ Sapphire's Flight but I also want to share some overall thoughts on the series as a whole in this review.
I'll attempt to do it without spoilers, but really, instead of reading my review you should be going and reading the actual books.
First of all, the author has achieved a level of real-ness that is unrivaled here. Everything from the characters and their interactions and relationships to the different cultures and the magic system serves to make this series so immersive and so immediate and real. I can't get these characters out of my head, because they feel so much like real people, and I just want to take another deep-dive into this world and learn everything about it because it's so rich and well-built.
The series follows several characters who fall into and out of prominence, but there are three main constant characters: Kefier, Sume, and Ylir. Each of these characters has completely different life circumstances and a completely different background that has shaped their lives. They are, generally speaking, normal people who end up bumping into all kinds of magical empire-shifting, world-ending fantasy goings-on and they get involved in it to a certain extent, but they're not the heroes, really, they're just side-characters in the "epic" plot. It's so interesting to be offered a view into how such world-altering events would affect normal people. It's not that it hasn't been done before in fantasy novels, but where we usually get a scene or two from the ordinary person's perspective this trilogy focuses on them and tells the story entirely through their eyes.
That's not to say we don't get to understand the bigger perspective. As the series goes along there are so many reveals and hints and events that show us this vast, realistic world with empires that are crumbling, disturbances in the fabric of the agan (which is like the power that runs through the whole world and lets people do magic), and so much more. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know more about these fictional lands and empires and their different ways of dealign with magic than I do about any other fictional universe and that's without any info-dumps whatsoever! It's amazing how well-written and well-plotted this book is to allow the world-building to be revealed so effortlessly. So if you're still in the first few chapters and you're not sure what the heck is going on don't worry: you'll soon be looking desperately for a map and grinning at little details and sitting there stunned after some insane reveal about some empire or war-lord somewhere.
I know I'm going to love re-reading this series because the hints that foreshadow these reveals are right there from the beginning and on second read I know I'll pick up on so much more detail than I did the first time around and it will be awesome. Just as I re-read the Harry Potter books and LoTR several times I look forward to re-reading this series in the future.
For me, the strongest of the three books was the second one. I took a while to get into the first one and real life took me away from reading it for a while and I still didn't know what was going on or who the characters were. By the time the second one rolled around I was so invested in these characters and knew enough about the world to really love it. This was when I started staying up late and neglecting real life duties in order to continue reading. The third book started a little slower for me and had a bit of love triangle stuff and a few too many intimate scenes that I feel dragged it a bit, but it eventually picked up to a breath-taking pace with lots of action.
Some teeny, tiny nitpicks:
- I tired of the witty banter at the beginning of book 3. It was a bit much and I feel like it made one of the important secondary characters feel a bit less realistic than all the other characters in the story.
- While it was still hundreds of times more nuanced than most mainstream representations I found the representation of the Gasparians was so obviously a cartoonish-representation of Arabs compared to all the other amazing representations of other cultures in the book. As I said, still far above the usual standard and there was nothing actually offensive or anything, just... it wasn't as good as well-done as the other lands/cultures in my personal opinion.
- I really wanted to see more of the Daegian Empire getting what it deserved at the end of the tale. By the time the third book rolled around with all the little hints and interactions we saw with the Empire I was 100% against this empire and wanted to see it crash down after what it had done to so many of the characters and other countries. I get why the author didn't spend more time on this, the story was about the side-characters, not the empires themselves, but I just really wanted to see more of the fate of this empire first-hand.
Lovely little details that made me smile:
- The families in this book. They're not all "perfect" by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it is their realistic imperfections that make it so awesome. I loved the bond between Sume and Oji, Oji and Kefier, and the family that develops around Kefier in book 2, including old Narani, for example. It's not often you see realistic interactions between people of such different ages in fantasy books - or just see realistic old people at all. And of course Kefier and Rosha, this is my favourite thing about the entire series hands-down.
- When Sume tells Arn to take his shoes off. This little moment made me grin. So many authors try so hard to develop different cultures and often end up getting hyper-focused on things that reveal that they really don't get different cultures or worse, they stray into stereotypes. This tiny little detail (among many others, of course) was such a simple little example of how the author gets it. She's writing about different cultures and making them feel so real because she gets how different cultures interact in the real world and the kinds of little differences that can exist.
- The flashbacks. It may seem weird for me to say this because the majority of fantasy books don't handle flashbacks well and they can feel kind of tedious or unnecessary. In this series I was excited when I saw a flashback as they were all so well-done! I'll also add the little asides/interludes to this. They were mostly from the points of view of completely different characters that were not part of the main cast and most of them were from the past or from things written about this time period later or something, but again, I didn't feel annoyed about stepping away from the main "action" and instead found myself looking forward to these.
Overall, this was an excellent fantasy series that you should definitely check out. A must-read for all fantasy fans, in my opinion. Do yourself a favour and go find this series and dive in.