1 out of 4 stars
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When I first read the description for Chiedu Obusez’s The Kingdoms of Hairpetah, I was intensely excited. I grew up reading high fantasy, and this book looked like it had everything my younger self would have loved. A witch queen had cast a curse on a kingdom that would cause madness and death, and a group of brave men had to travel across the land to retrieve an enchanted object that would put a stop to her reign of terror. Partly out of nostalgia for the books I devoured as a child and partly because I still love those kinds of novels, I took my chance to review this book as soon as I could, expecting to be swept up into a fantastical land. Unfortunately, while the concept excited me, the execution was lacking, and so I can only give this book 1 out of 4 stars.
While my reading tastes may have changed slightly since I was younger, I don’t think that’s the reason I found myself disliking this book. The idea is something I would still love to read now, and I would have loved to settle down with a story of adventure and betrayal. The main story of a group of men traveling to save a kingdom wasn’t the only plot of the book; the action would at times cut back to the city where everything started out. The king of that city had been poisoned by some dark magic (which the artifact the men are searching for would remove), and a quiet struggle springs up between his young son and another man for who will get the throne. The world itself is fascinating, showing different fictional cultures from a group of people who live in a forest and remind me of Robin Hood to a city where the main entertainment comes from bloody gladiator battles.
I was rather disappointed to find that the rest of the book didn’t hold up to what the story and world would seem to promise. While the characters were each given some distinguishing characteristic, they were introduced so quickly that I had trouble telling them apart until about halfway through the book, and even by the end, there were a few that I got confused. I never really got to a point where I could care about them, and when they were put in mortal danger, I knew their lives were at stake but simply couldn’t feel anything about the matter. I think that was the main problem I had while reading the book, aside from the constant confusion over which character was which: The author told us what emotions the characters felt (and, by extension, what we as readers ought to feel) rather than showing us.
The other problem I had is one that might be inherent to traditional high fantasy but felt exacerbated in this book. With a few exceptions, all the women of this world were presented as either weak or evil (and generally both, as most of the women shown were witches). Those who weren’t got very little time on the page and were, for the most part, devoid of any interesting characteristics. As a woman, I’ve gotten used to the fact that there are many books which have few to no female characters, but it still bothers me when those that exist are presented in either negative or boring lights.
In short, I didn’t care for this book at all. There were a few interesting moments here and there, but it felt as though the author was more interested in pushing the plot forward and writing fanciful language for the characters than in actually giving the readers any reason to care about the plot or characters.
******
The Kingdoms Of Hairpetah
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