The Heart of the Nhaga is the first in a four book epic fantasy series ("The Bird that Drinks Tears") that was originally published in Korea in 2003 as an online serial. The series is now coming to America in an official translation and I wanted to give it a try, being unfamiliar with the Korean SF/F scene (outside of following one Korean webcomic, Tower of God) and generally really interested in seeing how different non-Western cultures might interpret and play in the genre.
The result is....interesting and it's going to make this kind of an all over the place review I suspect. The story jumps all over the place within its chapters, often jumping back to characters' whose place in the larger story seems done or unclear before jumping again to the more prominent main characters. It also features a journey and quest whose purpose is never explained in this book, and setting aspects that are hinted at but also kind of not explained whatsoever, making it hard to really care too much about certain beings and objectives. And yet while there isn't a super focus on any given character and there's more mystery about certain characters that explored depth, the writing still drew me in quite a bit and I couldn't help but keep reading to see what would happen to a lot of the characters as the journey went on, even if I couldn't explain what the journey was about or why. And parts of the fantasy were compelling and often quite amusing and fun (one bit with Kings in the final act gets kind of ludicrous in a good way). So I think I'd recommend this one, even if I'm almost as confused as I am satisfied.
Plot Summary:
To the North of the Line of Limit that divides the world, three beings gather. One is a Tokkebi, a member of the immortal-esque race that can conjure real and illusory fire. Another is a Rekon, the giant bird-like race with immense strength and a fear of water. And the last is a human, but not just any human, but the man known as Kagan Draca, the man known for carrying a legendary double sword...and for crossing the Line of Limit into the Kiboren jungle and hunting the serpent-like immortal Nhaga...and eating them. The three gather at the behest of the Great Temple of Hainsha, who asks of them a mysterious mission: to cross the Line of Limit into the Kiboren and to bring a Nhaga specially prepared back across the Line that they never cross.
To the South of the Line of Limit, in the Nhaga city of Hattengraaj, two young male Nhaga - Ryun Pei and Hwarit Mahkerow - are near the most important part of a Nhaga's life: the heart removal ceremony, where their hearts are removed in the Heart Tower and they become immortal. The two have strange feelings towards the ceremony: for Ryun, it brings forth a horrible memory of past tragedy that makes him not want to go forward with the ceremony; for Hwarit, it represents the time when he will begin the secret mission with which has been entrusted for the sake of their people. But when something goes horribly wrong in the Heart Tower, Ryun finds himself forced onto the mission in Hwarit's stead, a mission that will force him to work with the three outsiders to survive both the dangers of the Kiboren Jungle as well as the Nhaga pursuers who will stop at nothing to kill him for being a sacrilege.....
The Heart of the Nhaga is told in a multi third person POV style, although each POV doesn't get its own chapter, and instead each chapter bounces around through different bits told from different characters' perspectives. Like some Western Epic Fantasy novels, this results in the story jumping at times from place to place, with certain characters' plotlines and actions occurring extremely far from the others, with there often being no clear throughline explaining how one characters' plotline might tie-in to what's going on with the main plot featuring Ryun, Teenahan (the Rekon), Byong (the Tokkebi), and Kagan. This isn't that unusual to me, even if I haven't really read much epic fantasy like that in a while. What is unusual however is how little the book basically tries to explain parts of the setting and parts of the characters' motivations, such that it becomes sometimes very strange to bounce back for example from the main quartet to a character back in Hattengraaj whose evil actions no longer seem relevant to the main plot.
Again, just to be clear, the fact that the book doesn't have too many infodumps to explain the setting isn't a bad thing and you can generally figure out quite a lot. More on that in a second. But the book also doesn't explain things like: What is the objective that the Temple has for the mission? Why do Teenahan, Byong and Kagan and their peoples (with respect to Byong) actually go along with the Temple? What exactly is going on with the gods of each race - gods who are hinted at being very important to this mission but whose existence and abilities are completely unclear other than being very very occasionally referenced. And while you can really get some of the setting from the story and the main characters all become very likable, this lack of clarity does at times make it hard to care about the story: especially when we switch away from the main characters to follow the others.
Fortunately the main characters, the journey that results and its telling, and the setting are fascinating and really fun at times to follow. Let's start with the setting, which contains a number of very different races with different attributes, ideas, and cultures, some of which contain their own very important subcultures (especially the human race, which is very splintered), much of which are inspired by Korean myth (especially the Tokkebi, which are sort of like Korean goblins). So you have the Nhaga's strange matriarchal society and a background struggle between women to attract men for prestige (and children, but those are also here more for prestige than actual parentage) as well as their devout defending of trees in the forest they have protected and their strange rituals of vengeance and whatnot that get invoked as the story goes on. You have the Tokkebi, who are afraid of blood but not of death - with their souls still living after their physical body dies and transitioning to the next stage. And you have ideas of peoples who may no longer exist but still make an impact, such as a hunting clan who cursed the last Kings such that there are no "Kings" left, a major factor that comes into play later in the plot, and of course you have some humans who make up their mind to change that. There's a lot of depth in the setting mixed in here, and while it is a struggle sometimes with how much isn't explained, there's plenty here to be utterly fascinated with.
Then there are our main characters - Kagan, Byong, Teenahan, and Ryun. Each have their own personalities and somewhat depth, as well as some mysteries about them. Kagan's past and driving thoughts remain a mystery in this book, but his storytelling and knowledge about the past and the Nhaga, his seemingly strange revenge-filled actions of killing and eating Nhaga, and his mysteriously connection to Ryun and Ryun's father Yosby that compels him to both protect Ryun and want to be away from him so he doesn't kill him. You have Byong, who is talkative, inquisitive, and wants to learn and help but also is afraid of blood and cannot quite figure out what is behind the mind of Kagan. Teenahan is kind of the comedy relief here, as the brute enforcer who gets into occasional trouble, but he's also a lot fun with his own pathos. And Ryun gets the most internal development, as we see how he struggles with the trauma of seeing Yosby's death, runs away as a result, and struggles with the need to both do right and the reality of his exile and those who hunt him.
And the journey the quartet wind up on features a number of complications that keep the story moving and interesting and also further explore the world. We have (without spoiling) an encounter with seeming monsters, the struggle with their assassin pursuers, and in the final act a struggle with some ignorant humans and their delusions of grandeur and kingship. The story manages to tell each of these parts with a mixture of seriousness and fun, and honestly at one point I genuinely cracked up laughing (in a good way) at one situation recurring and the characters' reactions to it. There are some themes here about duty and about kingship and about being an ideal ruler, but much of that is left to syllogism here since the setting's mysteries are not really explained at all as mentioned above, so hopefully those themes can be explored when answers are given in the future. But overall, this works I think, despite all the struggles I had without such answers. At the very least I'm willing to give this another book to see how the characters and world turns out, which is what a book 1 really should do I guess.
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