Status Updates From Цветок камалейника

The final reveal about the Gatekeeper was jaw-dropping, and it made me reassess all the previous events of the story and question if fate brought the heroes together. It’s especially poignant that essentially, each initiation of the Gatekeeper is a sacrifice and a choice, and all of them are about love. Because when it comes down to it, the main choice everyone makes is a choice to sacrifice themselves for love.

Radda’s main purpose in the story was to trigger a deus ex machine (almost literally), and her romance with Brent happened over two days – but on the grand scale, the whole story takes place during eight days, and everyone triggers a deus ex machine at some point. And Radda herself is such a likable character, fragile at first sight but with a will of steel and heart full of fire, that it’s easy to overlook any flaws

The characters are not as deep and layered as it’s usual in Gromyko’s books, but Brent is definitely a complex one. He devoted himself to serving the Gatekeeper, yet he still thinks himself unworthy. He keeps breaking all the rules of his order to find and protect his goddess, and he agonizes over every choice. He keeps thinking of himself as a killer, yet all he’d ever done is protect his friends and the Gatekeeper.

Radda is probably the smartest of the gang – while Jai and ErTar give off an impression of having just one braincell between them, and Brent possesses a mix of learned knowledge and life experience, Radda is the one who actually thinks stuff through, analyzes the situation and asks all the right questions. She is also the one who can see into the heart of things without getting hung up on the appearances, like Brent.

The more I read about the church of Yggr, the more common metaphor ‘priests are shepherds, and the congregation is their flock’ makes me uncomfortable. Because the shepherds don’t keep sheep simply for the love of animals – they have very practical goals that the cattle wouldn’t have approved of if they knew. And that’s what people are to dhers – nothing but cattle.

When ‘the Border’ was brought up several times, I naturally assumed it to be a normal border between countries. Not a river of lava surrounded by dead forest teeming with eldritch abominations from another world! One more point goes to Olga Gromyko for her wild imagination.

While the villains of the story are priests of the official religion, the religion itself isn’t portrayed as evil. Instead, the religion is a tool used by the evil priests to effectively control ordinary people. In reality, there’s no Beastgod, and probably no Yggr, and even the Gatekeeper isn’t exactly a goddess – there’s only the forces of life manipulated by priests of Yggr and the Gatekeeper alike.

The only significant female character, Radda, appears almost 80% into the story, but she’s worth it. At first, Radda appears to be comically naïve and even dangerously stupid with her religious zeal – until it’s revealed that she’d been a slave. Servitude to the god was the only way to freedom for her, and she was well aware that she would die in the process and didn’t mind it, making her character way more tragic.

While there are obvious things that make Yggr’s Kingdom stand out, like the existence of magic and fantastic creatures, there are also more subtle details. A bear is considered to be a mythical animal, Jai had never seen a lizard, and even ErTar, who’s a hunter spending a lot of time in the wilds, had only seen fish in human-made ponds. Something’s rotten in this kingdom, but Brent is the only one who notices.

Considering that Jai and ErTar had seen Brent die before their eyes and come back to life, they were very quick to believe that he’d been killed for real without seeing his body or any solid proof of his death… A building collapsing on anyone is no joke, but Brent has access to magic that works completely differently than the magic of Yggr’s priests, and Jai and ErTar know that – but they don’t even doubt his death.

It’s ironic that Brent, the priest of life-giving Gatekeeper, is so grim and no-nonsense and deadpan that he’s constantly mistaken for the servant of Dark Yggr, who commands death of all kinds. And since Brent is a fighter first and foremost who won’t stop till he reaches his goal, even if he’d drop dead with exhaustion… maybe that estimation is not so far off.

Bit by bit, details of the worldbuilding are revealed, and it turns out to be more complicated than classic ‘sword and sorcery’ type – there are multiple worlds existing in the story’s universe, and some creatures are able to travel between them while mysterious godly Gatekeeper is supposed to control the magic flowing between worlds and keep the natural order of things.

Hrusk appear to be a genuinely good guy – he’s fair to his subordinates, sympathetic toward children, doesn’t abuse his commanding position and quick to admit his mistakes and fix them. He just happens to be working for the corrupt and evil government, serving as the villain’s right-hand man and thus being the heroes’ enemy.

Poor Brent, he is broken in more ways than one – even after escaping Arhain, he still views himself as a servant first and foremost, only this time for a different master. He thinks of himself as nothing more than a weapon fashioned to protect his Mistress, completely forgetting that he’s a living person and not a tool. At one point, he remarks that pain became as habitual to him as heartbeat or breathing!

While it takes some time to take off, this book is basically a roadtrip quest, as the heroes spend the bulk of the story traveling in search of Brent’s godly Mistress (sort of a reincarnation of a goddess?). This seems to be a plot structure favored by Gromyko, as ‘Year of the Rat’ and ‘Loyal Enemies’ are also outlined in the same way. However, the author writes traveling mishaps brilliantly, so I’m not complaining.

As always with Olga Gromyko’s books, the world created is original and unique. For example, a variation of zombies is very common there – unless the body is burned or buried in consecrated ground it would crawl from the grave. But while they are invulnerable to most weapons and capable of physically killing people, zombies are mainly dangerous because they spread sickness that cannot be cured even by holy magic.

So, in just three days, ErTar and Jai:
- broke into a temple and killed the herald of Yggr;
- unknowingly robbed the most feared mafia boss in the kingdom;
- fought a zombie bare-handed because they mistook it for their new friend.
If things keep going the same way, they would topple the government next!

Brent’s fate was horrifying to begin with – he became Arhain’s prisoner when the latter captured his soul after killing him, and then was regularly tortured and killed and brought back to life to start the circle anew again and again and again. But to learn that this had been going on for 26 years?! Now it’s clear why he behaves so out of this world, and it’s a wonder he’s still mostly sane.

So, our power team consists of: a. a half-dead priest of a dead god ready to walk barefoot and naked across half the world to protect his goddess, literally; b. a highlander rogue with a habit of laughing in the face of danger – with idiotic laughter, not disparaging one; c. a guard with temper issues and strong sense of justice who hates forests; d. a cat.
And trust me, the cat is the most sensible out of them all.

ErTar and Jai bickering like an old married couple is my new favourite thing. There’s a supposedly mad priest of an evil god whom they had seen crumble to dust the previous night threatening them, and they are so annoyed with each other that they simply keep arguing! Sometimes I think that they have only one braincell between the two of them, and even the priest in question is completely confused by their attitude.

The story takes place in a big city, but there’s no mention of a ruler or a governor at all – instead, it’s the church of Yggr that holds all the power. And if you claim to carry out the will of a god, who would dare to stand against you? Not to mention that priests are the only ones able to use magic, and the farming communities relies on their spells to get proper harvest. No wonder that the priests are so corrupt!

According to the official chronicles, three hundred years ago, the humanity was enslaved by the evil Beastgod and his servants, until another god, Two-Faced Yrrg, had slayed the Beastgod and freed them, sending his priests to act as shepherds and granting them power to make holy magic in his name. But you know the problem with official chronicles? They are always written by the victors.

After witnessing something that shatters their whole worldview and makes them hunted people for the all-powerful priests, Jai goes and gets drunk while ErTar works out the best ways to hide in plain sight and keep out of trouble. The different approach to the same problem gives them a pretty apt characterization.

ErTar’s ethnicity, the mountain dwellers, are stereotyped as dumb simpletons, thieves and are generally aren’t trusted. Of course, that’s not true as ErTar is not only street-smart, but literate as well – the skill that not even all guards possess. However, ErTar readily uses the ‘dumb magpie’ mask when it suits him, using the prejudice and benefiting from it.

I expected that Jai, the young city guard, would be naïve and idealistic, and ErTar, wandering hunter from the mountains, would be sly and self-serving, because that’s the usual archetype, a noble guard and a devilish rogue. But years of thankless work made Jai jaded and cynical, if diligent, and while ErTar is certainly a bit of a rogue, he’s more noble and generous than people who scorn him.

One of the reasons this book is awesome: there is a giant pony-sized riding cat that could’ve probably bite a man’s hand off, if he didn’t have a demeanor of a playful kitten. Seriously, Tishsh is precious and I love him.

In typical Olga Gromyko’s fashion, we are dropped into the world and left to figure it out on our own. Who are dhers and yers, the fear-inspiring priests of Two-Faced Yggr? What’s the reason for the blood-spilling feud between the two religions of this world? Whom the Hunters hunt? Is it magic or technology that allows for thought-shooters to exist? I have no idea, but I’m fascinated and completely hooked.