The Heroic Legend of Arslan by Yoshiki Tanaka

 The Heroic Legend of Arslan

 By Yoshiki Tanaka

So last year I reviewed the three volumes of The Heroic Legend of Arslan, so let me sum up the situation. The ancient and wealthy nation of Pars was invaded by the religious fanatics of Lusitania. The royal army through a combination of internal treachery and magic was crushed in open battle and the capital was taken by storm after a brief siege. Queen Tahamine has been taken captive and the fate of King Andragoras III is unknown but everyone suspects he's alive because if the invaders had killed the king, they would have told everyone. One thing everyone knows is that young Prince Arslan survived the battle and is roaming about the countryside but where he is exactly is an open question. 

Prince Arslan has managed to gather about himself an incredibly capable crew of retainers in his quest to both stay alive and throw out the abusive invaders of his homeland. Last issue we saw the beautiful and skilled priestess Farangis join alongside the bard Gieve. While neither are as brilliant as Narsus or as point-blank lethal as Daryun, they're still capable of matching several normal soldiers in battle and Arslan needs all the capable men and women he can get. Although I have to admit to giving some side-eye to Farangis' temple here. I mean your country is being invaded by a nation that as a matter of policy will kill you all for being priests and priestesses to a heathen god, you know there's only one member of the royal family left who can rally the resistance and you send... One person as support? It kind of makes me wonder how this country managed to hold together in the first place.

This isn't to say that the invaders are showing themselves off to any great advantage either (Invading armies seldom do). Their conquest is at best half done and they're already fighting each other like a band of hungry hyenas at a kill. This is inflamed by Queen Tahamine, who is being courted by the Lusitanian King Innocentius VII, she leads him on by telling him she could never remarry while her husband is alive. So she would need King Innocentius to bring her King Andragoras head on a stick pretty please. This turns out to be a really intelligent move on her part as it paralyzes everyone and means no one can claim he's dead without actual proof. (That is incredibly clever.  Glad they seem to have norms around consent in marriage though, because sometimes that doesn’t matter. {King Innocentius in a lot of ways lives up to his name, although he pairs that with being utterly useless so he comes across as rather childlike.  He pawns off the actual work of running things on his younger brother and honestly seems to be in love with Tahamine and concerned with her happiness in a very self-centered and bumbling way.} Huh.)

This request also really upset Lord Silver Mask who it turns out is keeping King Andragoras prisoner for personal reasons and is really focused on dragging out the death (What the fuck?  This is why you consolidate power into a bureaucratic state apparatus and either sideline or kill off the nobility.). He doesn't want to give King Andragoras up because he's super focused on making him suffer. This is always a mistake by the way (No Mr. Powers, I expect you to die…Now activate the unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism!), and I'm pretty sure it'll come back to bite him before too long. It also roils the Church led by Bishop Bodin who doesn't want to see his king marry a heathen queen. That after all might mean someone putting the breaks on his mass executions and book burnings (Oh come now, the executions would of course continue.). As you can guess I really don't like Bodin and I like him even less when he's leading an army of fanatic Knights Templar and ignoring everyone else. 

This volume also introduces us to Xandes, the son of the traitorous Lord Kharlan whose betrayal helped win the battle for the Lusitanians. Lord Kharlan was slain by Daryun and Xandes is looking for revenge, so he's entirely willing to swear loyalty to Lord Silvermask for that and other reasons. We do get a reveal of what Lord Silvermask's motives are and what his back story is and let me just say it's a doozy. I'm not going to spoil it but it makes sense even if I'm not left feeling all that sympathetic to him afterward (It better be good.). 

This is a guy with a legitimate complaint but his methods resulted in vast suffering and pain being caused to the people of Pars. Lord Silvermask comes across as wildly indifferent to any pain except his own and his constant invoking of his “rights” and privileges only rankles me further (God, just commit regicide like a normal person…{This is easily his biggest mistake in the series so far}). I'm going to talk more about this in a couple of months when I'm hoping to review volume 5. He's a very selfish character in my view but an incredibly realistic and believable one, which makes him a satisfying villain that you can hate despite having elements that might make him sympathetic. It's a complex characterization and I'm thrilled by it. 

With Queen Tahamine engineering a split between the secular and religious Lusitanian forces with a simple request, the invaders are now spending more energy fighting each other than hunting for Arslan. Now this doesn't mean that Arslan is having a trouble-free life here. He's still having to deal with squads of Lusitanian and Pars soldiers who answer to traitor nobles hunting for him. I'll admit that Gieve, despite me not really caring for the character, shines in this volume. Ironically when he's not busy trying rather ham-handedly to seduce Farangis, he shows himself to be very capable and dare I say honorable. In fact, he saves Arslan from death and capture several times at great cost to himself. He also shows his abilities when Arlsan has to deal with nobles who are trying to play both sides to get the best deal possible. Helping him avoid captivity at the hands of “allies” and open enemies alike.

 

The quarreling between the different factions of his enemies does give Arslan time and space to learn several important political and military lessons in this book. He learns that fulfilling his promise to Narsus to free the slaves of Pars isn't gonna be a simple one to fulfill. His first attempt at emancipation is a dismal failure. He learns that a number of his nobles are going to put politics ahead of the good of the country and won't help him without reward (Which should be really obvious.  Or maybe I’m just cynical, bitter, and have good reason to hate the concept of nobles. {Our hero is a 14-year-old boy raised on tales of noble virtue and kept away from the nobility, I feel he deserves some leeway here}. That's fair.). He also learns that some of these nobles are going to be more focused on removing his retainers to make the Prince more dependent on them than on actually fighting the Lusitanians. It's a good thing for the Prince to learn these lessons at a low cost due to the inattention of the enemy. (When he retakes the country, the executions should continue. {I remind you these nobles are fictional and therefore not actually what you call class enemies} And?  If I were the kid, I would remember all of the things they tried to do while I tried to regain the throne, and some of them would be defenestrated upon my victory.)

We also learn something interesting about Prince Arslan. We learn that he spent much of his boyhood being raised outside of the palace by a merchant couple but when they died of poisoning, his true heritage was revealed and he was brought into the palace and his training as an heir commenced. I'm finding this rather strange, especially when paired with the revelation of the backstory of Lord Silvermask. This raises some interesting questions but we'll have to look at future volumes for the answers. 

This was a good volume, in all honesty, we got important revelations about the villains and our heroes. It mixed together chase scenes, intrigue, and brutal combat in a way that keeps our interest and kept the story from getting stale. I enjoyed it a lot and I think the pace was well-maintained and well-written. The Heroic Legend of Arslan by Yoshiki Tanaka gets an A from me. I do recommend you check out the prior reviews and the book series yourself. By the way, if you enjoyed this review consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote on upcoming content for as little as a dollar a month. Also a special thank you to Big Steve who is my biggest patron supporter. I'll be returning soon but until then, take care of yourself, each other and of course, keep reading! 

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders