Guiomar, a schoolgirl from
Audierna, with hesitation goes to Mastrina Xaoven's house in the old quarter of
Plugufan for Klavia classes, and she is offered that Mastrina will tell her a
story in exchange for her dedication to learning the Klavia. In the background
we sense that pertaining to historical segregation of Brun/Malluma community
and Gwende people, demeanor for Brun people is still undignified. The story
follows alternation between Guiomar accounting her visits to Mastrina's house
and her personal affairs, and Mastrina telling the story to Guiomar in those
visits. 1
1. "I
want to propose a deal: we'll divide your class time into two parts. If you
invest a minimum amount of efforts in learning to play the Klavia, I'll tell
you a story – a good one, too. It's about a girl just like you, perhaps a tiny
bit older. It begins on the days went to one of those clubs in the nabrallos. I
think you'll like it."
The story is about a Gwende girl
Attica, nearly of Guiomar's age. In her disguised visit to Bragunde's decrepit
quarters to take part in a concert where popular hicupé music is overwhelming she
befriends a Malluma boy Fuco, who claims to be a firewalker, after they outwit
the SAN agents. Fuco, takes her with him to meet Onga, a witch living in a cemetry,
to know the riddle behind the Bragunde being plagued by scorpions on the
street. Onga's revelation in her crypt, and a hint from a woman at the bar—from
where Attica, caught by rebels, manages to free herself—draw their route to Morvane
Tower, which as per the legend, where the entrance to the underworld of Nigrofe
is situated. After another revelation by Onga and hearing Cecillio, a blind
healer, about the Tartarus and the forthcoming evil in the land of Bragunde and
Nigrofe—outcome
of the disruption of balance between good and evil, when a sacred tree was
uprooted, Attica and Fuco venture into a new journey into the Green Country,
the underworld of Nigrofe.2
This makes the first part of the novel.
2. "The
subteran cult is based on balance," continued Onga. "The Malluma race
professes the faith of its ancestors, which claims equality in the scales
between good and evil. The balance is reflected in its two sacrred symbols:
Dendria, the peach tree, represented good, while to Tartarus fell the mission of
embodying evil, death that lies in wait, conscious of its victory, death. These
two symbols lived side by side in Nigrofe, their balance maintained by the
priests of Venquita Monastery."
The second part, Nigrofe, largely
contains an adventurous tale of Attica and Fuco, who land in the fantastical
and magical world full of hunters, thieves, mythical creatures, scorpions, rugged
mountains, forests, friends and a powerful being called Birdman rolling the
dies. And they must use gold and a peach stone to stop the evil before it is too
late, finding their way to the Venquita—where captain Touro, the ruling colonel
of Nigrofe has imprisoned all the women—where they are supposed to make
brothers Dinis and Vinicius power-up their obelisk before knowing all the
secrets for the demonic unraveling of the Tartarus, but what Attica and Fuco
are told by Onga and Cecillio isn't enough!
"Newspaper and magazine
cuttings, photocopies from encyclopaedias, adverts,…" put as if chapter
headings provide a comic-strip dimension to the story uplifting the realm of
fiction. The invented names (I suppose), particularly coined for the story, for
which a glossary is provided at the end, is a playful approach to create parallel
coexisting fictional world: Hicupé feels like the Jazz of the modern
world. Mastrina tells the story with "One Thousand and One Nights" kind
of cliffhangers that makes all the secrets coming together near the end all the
more interesting, as far as that the novel ends in an episode leaving behind a
trail for a sequel.
Tartarus is an adventurous tale of
clash and harmony between good and evil and an audacious tale of little saviors
of the world.
Author: Antonio Manuel Fraga
Translator: Jonathan Dunne
Publisher: Small Stations Press
Page Count: 227
Price: $ 7.30
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