Aneklou and Oskeau are twin brothers and the last
survivors of the ancient Delar. Their mother is forced to send them out into
the world as babies as the conquistadors approach, each finding their own path.
One son grows and knows family and love, he knows loss
and pain but he also knows caring and guidance and wisdom. He is introduced to
different cultures and the strange people of the world around him, gaining in
skill, wisdom and magic.
The other knows no love, only slavery, cruelty, isolation
and pain. But he finds ancient powers that respond to his blood. He treads a
much darker path, rising from the slave to the slavemaster, from the abused to
the abuser and from the downtrodden to the ruler
The conquistadors themselves have found ancient, dark
magic that has lead one of them, meddling with things he doesn’t understand, to
build his own dark empire.
When this book was given to me it was described as an
alternate history with paranormal elements in 1400s America with parallels to
colonisation. If I wasn’t told that, I wouldn’t have known it. There is nothing
in the book to suggest this is America. Not the people, not the wildlife, not the
plants – I didn’t see anything that made me think America. For that matter, I
didn’t see anything to make me think Earth – sure there were mentions of Spain
and a vague allusion to conquistadors, but no follow up in the rest of the
book. The book was far more full of completely alien creatures – black furred “gliders”
with claws that lived in trees. Quill-backed monsters. Giant frog-people. These
different intelligent creatures that the human protagonists (from an ancient,
magical “Delar” people) kept running into.
It didn’t feel like Earth or America. And if it was pre
or pending-colonisation America, it felt like what was REALLY there was just
completely removed to be replaced by this alien, fantasy world. Which goes for
the characters as well - the cast of humans is supposed to be 99% Native
American people. However, if I didn’t know this already, I wouldn’t have been
able to tell this from the book. Just as there is nothing in the book to
indicate that we’re in America (or on Earth for that matter), there is also
nothing about the characters to indicate they are Native American. Even when we
have characters who are supposed to be European (one evil wizard lord, I think,
and a woman escaping persecution from Spain) there is nothing in the text to
differentiate them. I don’t know if this is a story involving Native American people
and 1400s America – or whether this is a story where Native American people and
1400s America has been completely erased from existence to make room for this
fantasy world.
