Lee Young-Do has been a renowned epic fantasy novelist in Korea for decades. His series The Bird That Drinks Tears originally appeared as an online serial in 2002 and was published in four volumes in 2003. Wikipedia calls the first book in the series Nhaga Who Extract Their Hearts, but the English translation of this novel by Anton Hur that’s being released June 2 is called The Heart of the Nhaga. I was very entertained in puzzling out the worldbuilding, the characters and the plot. I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters, but it was intriguing following them and their interactions. In some ways, it reads sort of like a fairly traditional journey-quest fantasy, or sword and sorcery with extremely low-level sorcery, but in some ways, it’s a pretty wild trip. Readers who are looking for a different kind of fantasy novel, especially anyone getting tired of romantasy, may want to consider giving this a try.
The four main characters here are male, all from different species: humans, giant birdlike Rekons, flame-wielding Tokkebi, and the reptilian, telepathic Nhaga who have come to rule much of the world after developing a ritual to extract and preserve their hearts to make their bodies effectively immortal. There are some female characters with agency, but readers don’t see much from their point of view, at least initially, as the male questers begin to gather and take a journey.
The Nhaga are a matriarchal society. Young males who haven’t undergone the heart ceremony yet (or the few who reject it) are viewed as prey and are supposed to be escorted when outside their homes. Females sometimes seduce those escorts into joining their reverse harems, heightening their prestige while lowering that of other houses. But the word “father” is a ridiculous joke as only mothers are acknowledged. One of the female characters refers to the males as dice that the women throw in their games — and you don’t ask dice who they prefer to be thrown by, do you? This reminds me somewhat of Drow matriarchs, or for a more recent, science fictional example, the semi-civilized phase of spider civilization in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time when the female spiders prided themselves on their restraint in not eating the males.
Anyway, two young male Nhaga are anticipating their heart-extrication ceremonies, one with extreme trepidation and the other looking ahead to a quest he’ll undertake afterward. This part reminds me a lot of The Tripods trilogy by John Christopher, particularly The White Mountains (1967), in which some boys flee their Capping ceremony (the adulthood ceremony administered by their Tripod overlords).
But events intervene, and the scared one gets sent on the quest instead; he needs to leave Nhaga territory for the cold North. Luckily for him, he is met and aided by the human/Rekon/Tokkebi team that has been sent to escort him. Strangers before this mission, they are somewhat ill-matched, not understanding each others’ ways very well; the reader comes to learn about each species’ strengths, weaknesses, and customs as the companions talk and work together. But the human leader, Kagan Draca, remains fairly enigmatic.
At first, they are dodging Nhaga patrols, and one determined pursuer. Later, they start encountering bands of roving men with leaders who pathetically call themselves kings, and finally a city with a former clan chief who has named himself king. The philosophical Kagan Draca has a lot to say about kings, and none of it is good. He despises the advisors who prop up kings and says that living under a king turns his subjects into heartless followers who are cruel to anyone outside their groups. I’m not sure what message Lee Young-Do was trying to convey in 2002-3, but this certainly seems to hit home these days.
It’s also not quite clear whether Lee Young-Do is trying to convey an environmental message, with his legends of dragons and lions that the Nhaga exterminated while they were conquering territory in the past, or humans’ tales of giant tigers, or if they’re just providing fantastic color. Events toward the end, however, show that the past is not always completely past.
As the adventure continues and the group keeps encountering obstacles and opponents of various kinds, scenes from the Temple that is their goal and the Nhaga city that the youngster left behind show the religious, political, and familial machinations that continue. The desired result of the quest (besides the geographical transportation) is not explicit, but it becomes ever more clear that its results may change not only Nhaga society, but the world.
I greatly enjoyed this book, and I look forward to finding out what happens in future volumes. I haven’t read the original Korean, but Anton Hur’s translation very ably conveys lyrical beauty, muscular action, sinister strategems, pathos, horror, and humor. There were a few instances where I questioned a word choice (for instance, there was a sentence I thought should have said “wary” instead of “weary”), but overall, this was a really satisfying read.
Content warnings: Murders, violence, gore, cannibalism, sexism, species-ism.
Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
