An Elegy of Heroes: The Agartes Epilogues Complete Trilogy

The Agartes Epilogues #1-3

by K.S. Villoso

An empire's quest for magic has brought a golden age on a bed of corpses and lost kingdoms. In the cold wake of grief, those left behind must learn to pick up the pieces. A character-driven tale that juggles slice-of-life and epic all at once in the footsteps of Robin Hobb's Farseer. Come and discover Villoso's debut fantasy series, which has been called ambitious, remarkably solid, and expertly set up.

Book Geeks' Uncompromised Top Books of 2017
The Weatherwax Report Top 10 Indie
Tome and Tankard's Best of 2017
Nominated for Best Self-Published/Independent Novel of 2017 for r/fantasy's Stabby Awards
Nominated for Best Novel of 2017 for r/fantasy's Stabby Awards
r/fantasy's RRAWR Book of the Month for September 2017

After a botched job gets his friend killed, the mercenary Kefier is chased down by former associates for the crime. Already once branded a murderer, he comes face-to-face with his friend's sister, Sume: a young woman reeling from her own string of bad luck, and the last person he would ever want to confess to. Their lives, unknowingly tangled before they've met, are now thrown into upheaval as one flees from the past and the other runs to it. 
In the meantime, the young, arrogant merchant Ylir takes a special interest in Kefier while he battles with a powerful mage, one whose name has been long forgotten in legend. At the crux of their conflict is that same, terrible creature with one eye, cast from the womb of a witch, with powers so immense whoever possesses it holds the key to bring the continent to its knees.

Genres: Fantasy

759 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2017

About the author

I write character-driven epic fantasy with huge doses of horror, angst, and frustratingly tangled character relationships. You can read more about my work at my website:

http://www.ksvilloso.com

__

K.S. Villoso was born in a dank hospital on an afternoon in Albay, Philippines, and things have generally been okay since then. After spending most of her childhood in a slum area in Taguig (where she dodged death-defying traffic, ate questionable food, and fell into open-pit sewers more often than one ought to), she and her family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, where they spent the better part of two decades trying to chase the North American Dream. She is now living amidst the forest and mountains with her family, children, and dogs in Anmore, BC.

Reviews

[Noor Al-Shanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Elegy of Heroes is an excellent epic fantasy series with deep characterization, rich, epic world-building, and an expertly woven plot. You will fall in love with these characters, these families, and then you'll have your heart torn out as they're put through dark and dangerous times. It's earned itself a place among my all-time favourite book series.

I've already done reviews for each of the three books in the trilogy: Jaeth's Eye ~~ Aina's Breath ~~ Sapphire's Flight but I also want to share some overall thoughts on the series as a whole in this review.

I'll attempt to do it without spoilers, but really, instead of reading my review you should be going and reading the actual books.

First of all, the author has achieved a level of real-ness that is unrivaled here. Everything from the characters and their interactions and relationships to the different cultures and the magic system serves to make this series so immersive and so immediate and real. I can't get these characters out of my head, because they feel so much like real people, and I just want to take another deep-dive into this world and learn everything about it because it's so rich and well-built.

The series follows several characters who fall into and out of prominence, but there are three main constant characters: Kefier, Sume, and Ylir. Each of these characters has completely different life circumstances and a completely different background that has shaped their lives. They are, generally speaking, normal people who end up bumping into all kinds of magical empire-shifting, world-ending fantasy goings-on and they get involved in it to a certain extent, but they're not the heroes, really, they're just side-characters in the "epic" plot. It's so interesting to be offered a view into how such world-altering events would affect normal people. It's not that it hasn't been done before in fantasy novels, but where we usually get a scene or two from the ordinary person's perspective this trilogy focuses on them and tells the story entirely through their eyes.

That's not to say we don't get to understand the bigger perspective. As the series goes along there are so many reveals and hints and events that show us this vast, realistic world with empires that are crumbling, disturbances in the fabric of the agan (which is like the power that runs through the whole world and lets people do magic), and so much more. In fact, I'm pretty sure I know more about these fictional lands and empires and their different ways of dealign with magic than I do about any other fictional universe and that's without any info-dumps whatsoever! It's amazing how well-written and well-plotted this book is to allow the world-building to be revealed so effortlessly. So if you're still in the first few chapters and you're not sure what the heck is going on don't worry: you'll soon be looking desperately for a map and grinning at little details and sitting there stunned after some insane reveal about some empire or war-lord somewhere.

I know I'm going to love re-reading this series because the hints that foreshadow these reveals are right there from the beginning and on second read I know I'll pick up on so much more detail than I did the first time around and it will be awesome. Just as I re-read the Harry Potter books and LoTR several times I look forward to re-reading this series in the future.

For me, the strongest of the three books was the second one. I took a while to get into the first one and real life took me away from reading it for a while and I still didn't know what was going on or who the characters were. By the time the second one rolled around I was so invested in these characters and knew enough about the world to really love it. This was when I started staying up late and neglecting real life duties in order to continue reading. The third book started a little slower for me and had a bit of love triangle stuff and a few too many intimate scenes that I feel dragged it a bit, but it eventually picked up to a breath-taking pace with lots of action.

Some teeny, tiny nitpicks:

- I tired of the witty banter at the beginning of book 3. It was a bit much and I feel like it made one of the important secondary characters feel a bit less realistic than all the other characters in the story.

- While it was still hundreds of times more nuanced than most mainstream representations I found the representation of the Gasparians was so obviously a cartoonish-representation of Arabs compared to all the other amazing representations of other cultures in the book. As I said, still far above the usual standard and there was nothing actually offensive or anything, just... it wasn't as good as well-done as the other lands/cultures in my personal opinion.

- I really wanted to see more of the Daegian Empire getting what it deserved at the end of the tale. By the time the third book rolled around with all the little hints and interactions we saw with the Empire I was 100% against this empire and wanted to see it crash down after what it had done to so many of the characters and other countries. I get why the author didn't spend more time on this, the story was about the side-characters, not the empires themselves, but I just really wanted to see more of the fate of this empire first-hand.


Lovely little details that made me smile:

- The families in this book. They're not all "perfect" by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it is their realistic imperfections that make it so awesome. I loved the bond between Sume and Oji, Oji and Kefier, and the family that develops around Kefier in book 2, including old Narani, for example. It's not often you see realistic interactions between people of such different ages in fantasy books - or just see realistic old people at all. And of course Kefier and Rosha, this is my favourite thing about the entire series hands-down.

- When Sume tells Arn to take his shoes off. This little moment made me grin. So many authors try so hard to develop different cultures and often end up getting hyper-focused on things that reveal that they really don't get different cultures or worse, they stray into stereotypes. This tiny little detail (among many others, of course) was such a simple little example of how the author gets it. She's writing about different cultures and making them feel so real because she gets how different cultures interact in the real world and the kinds of little differences that can exist.

- The flashbacks. It may seem weird for me to say this because the majority of fantasy books don't handle flashbacks well and they can feel kind of tedious or unnecessary. In this series I was excited when I saw a flashback as they were all so well-done! I'll also add the little asides/interludes to this. They were mostly from the points of view of completely different characters that were not part of the main cast and most of them were from the past or from things written about this time period later or something, but again, I didn't feel annoyed about stepping away from the main "action" and instead found myself looking forward to these.



Overall, this was an excellent fantasy series that you should definitely check out. A must-read for all fantasy fans, in my opinion. Do yourself a favour and go find this series and dive in.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After thoroughly enjoying the first book of a new trilogy by this author; The Wolf of Oren-yaro, I wanted more. This previous trilogy fills in many gaps and I would recommend reading it first.

I think the author describes her work very accurately when she wrote: "character-driven epic fantasy with huge doses of horror, angst, and frustratingly tangled character relationships." Yes, tangled is an appropriate discrimination. The plot twists and turns. Branches out with minor characters and then turns back to the main story. Never is all revealed at once. The goal is always tantalizing hidden with hints along the way.

There is also a diverse nationality. Countries with different appearances, culture, language, gods and views of magic. And yes, there's magic and unique magical creatures that play pivotal roles.

Quite a dense world building. I was glad to be reading an eBook so I could refresh my memory when a name came up that drew a blank. None of the players are super human but they are capable, strong and multifaceted. The female characters are particularly admirable.

If you want a synopsis of the story there are reviews for that. The triolgy has constantly delivered tension and crisis that keep you on edge so I can't emphasize enough how exciting and engaging this author's writing is to read. Although not prone to overly flowery prose it's still very descriptive. There an economy about it while also conveying clear visuals.

Definitely added to my following list.

[Thomas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished the book(s) but found it hard to keep track of the characters. I would recommend you read this with a pen a paper to write down each character you meet along with their "apparent" nationality (race) and political connection. This will help as they keep coming back, even if you think they are dead.
The characters are interesting, and the plot did seem to hold together. Not the best thing I have read, but as I said above it interested me enough to finish.

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't get interested in the characters, gave up