Book Review: The Forgotten People by Eva Raaff (The Taragon Trilogy #2)

 

 Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads De Taragon Trilogie #1: Het vergeten volk.

Book two in the Taragon Trilogy, which I am revisiting and have fond memories of. Spoilers ahead.

Time has passed. Matthias is now a prince, Kaya is learning how to be a proper lady and the united kingdoms are at peace. But when a mysterious figure known as the Mosha-Soter arises in the desert-y south, trouble start brewing. A monster is loose in the forest, attacking livestock and people; children are vanishing once again and signs show that the devastating green fire from before might be back. Matthias and Kaya will have to once more face a dangerous foe.

Generally on the same level as the first book. While I personally like the first more because of nostalgia and just the feel it has to it, this one is definitely on the same level if not better if you ask me. One of my main complaints with book one was how trope-y it felt. Pretty much every common fantasy trope was present to at least some degree, with stereotypical characters such as the "wise old wizard" and "evil queen who uses dark magic". 

This book, however, has a more unique feel to it. It takes the building blocks placed by the first book and elaborates further on them. The setting is also more unique, being a mix between the generic medieval kingdoms and the cooling down desert. That was neat to see. I also liked the elaboration we got on our main characters here. Unfortunately, some like Malvezijn and Lupa are still pretty bare bones, but Matthias and Kaya actually have good arcs here, especially Matthias. 

The deal is basically that Matthias, now a prince and no longer a peasant, is starting to lose sight of what's really important to him (his friendships and family) because he has pretty much everything he wants. He falls for a snobbish girl who greatly hurts Kaya and in turn Kaya is sent to a school for girls to learn manners. It takes a while for the duo to re-unite after this, but Matthias really does realize his mistake after his epic journey. He not only took Kaya for granted, but also other things such as his many gifts and his peasant adoptive parents who raised him. So it was neat to see him grow into a flawed but still likable character. And Kaya...I feel so bad for her throughout all of this but honesty she was good as well. I like how she made up with Matthias. And despite how much the duo likes one another, they as of yet don't seem to be in a relationship. Which I can appreciate because I'm not one for rushing (though I'm not a fan of endless "will they, won't they"'s either). 

The reveal of who the Mosha-Soter was was pretty interesting and honestly my main complaint is that I just didn't like him as a villain. He's been hurt and all, but I just...didn't care. Zafyra in book one wasn't a fantastic villain, either, but I liked her better than Alchior here. Also wasn't a fan of how the book itself (not the characters, the narrator) describes him as hideous because of his scars and disability. Like...you know, disabled or scarred people could read this and it wouldn't be pleasant. It'd be one thing to have an in-universe character say it, you could always realize that the character is wrong for having this attitude, but it's literally the omniscient narrator themself being like "oh his scars are so hideous and he's so deformed and ugly" in one scene. Not that great. It'd have been better to describe Alchior as horrible because of his actions rather than his looks, since he's the main villain and all. Like, his actions are still shown as vile as well, but to go on about his looks like that. Yikes. 

Another thing that kinda took me out of the book: despite the magic, fictional names and locations, this is apparently supposed to take place in our universe on Earth and on a weird timeline? Since the stars and star signs shown in this book are identical to ours. There's also another scene that really took me out of the story where the characters sing a commonly-known Dutch happy birthday song that wasn't written until the 1800s. This is a medieval fantasy. It'd be like having characters in your English-language medieval fantasy book sing "Happy Birthday". Kind of a shame, because aside from these immersion-shattering scenes I genuinely like the world Raaff has crafted. 

Finally, the whole thing with Lupa kinda felt like a cop-out. For those not remembering, Lupa is the lady from the first book who can turn into a wolf at will. During this book, she gets her free will taken from her while in wolf form by Alchior and is sent to do his bidding by him, killing people and livestock left and right trapped in her current shape, mindless and ruthless. Matthias finds her and frees her from Alchior's spell, but he cannot return her free will or have her turned back into a woman yet. So the entire time Matthias is struggling with the fact that, even if Lupa gets her will and human form back, she'll have to face the fact that she murdered several people, even if it was against her own will. But then in one of the last few chapters it turns out that she only killed livestock and instead Alchior killed those people and made Lupa take the blame. Like...that would've been such an interesting conflict to focus on!

Lupa is generally rather peaceful and only use her wolf form for violence against bad people when necessary, so the idea that she could've killed innocents and has to live with this guilt would've been super interesting to explore, especially since she's kind of underutilized as a character in this book. But instead it's just Alchior and she's just restored and all is good. There's barely even any focus on her character this book outside of the whole conflict with her killing things under Alchior's control, outside of that she's just blank-minded trapped in her wolf form. I liked Lupa's character in the first book, so to see her deal with the consequences of what she might've done would've been a cool elaboration on her character. But she's pretty much a nothing character in this outside of the conflict with the cop-out ending. She's barely even shown in her human form before or after losing her free will. Just a shame, I'd have loved to explore this part of her character.

Overall this was definitely a strong installment and, aside from the villain and some immersion-breaking, I did really enjoy it. My personal preference will always be the first book, but I really like this one as well and honestly I think I may consider it better than the first because it uses less common tropes and relies more on originality and building upon the world and characters we already know.

Rating: 4/5