The Gests of Nhalbar (Pirin Book II) by Sebastiano B. Brocchi. English edition translated by Giovanni Carmine Costabile. English Edition Streetlib, August 2023. Paperback.

The Gests of Nhalbar is a great read. The characters come alive vividly and the plot is engaging throughout and easy to follow. In particular, I enjoyed the descriptions of the different regions and cities, plus the peoples who inhabit them and their alliances with or treacheries against one another. My favorite scene was the Amazon’s battle against the Dragoneers and Nhalbar’s hunt for and capture of their mother dragon’s heart. I also liked the gathering of all the peoples at the end, for the final battle, and finding out how the various characters were connected. Iriah’s return, with the Crown of Sibereht, and her speech was more climatic than the battle itself though.

My favorite character is Iriah. I relate to her as being a sort of unsung hero who stays in the background until she suddenly returns to save the day. I also liked reading about King Helewen and his struggles with love and raising two sons who seemed to embody the fate of the world. His responses seemed entirely plausible. I also think his character was well chosen as the narrator and makes me interested in reading the two books in the series that preceed this one. I did wonder, however, if Helewen knew that Sighur was really Dhorin when he sent Nhalbar to be tutored by him?

Another thing that made me interested in reading the other stories is the fact that I had two dreams about the characters. In the first, I defeated Nothal with a magical whip in the kitchen of an amusement park restaurant. The second started out with King Helewen riding in a stagecoach with Gandalf, Gimli, and Legolas. They are run off the dirt road they’re traveling on by bad guys in another stagecoach and forced to camp beside the road, in a dark forest, for the night. While they’re sitting beside the campfire, they start arguing about whose race has the most historical prominence. Then they realize that, in the answer, they would be able to solve the case of the crime that the bad guys had committed. Unfortunately, that was as far as I got because the cat woke me up.

I think that the theme of an individual’s struggle between their good impulses and bad one was best illustrated in the conversations and inner monologues of Storm, Nothal, and King Helewen and I also appreciated the dilemma of the outlaw brigade that Nhalbar joined. The actual illustrations were also helpful to understanding the different races of people who inhabited the lands, thus adding depth to the story. It would’ve been cool to see more landscape drawings though.