The Prisoner of Tardalim

A thank you to Robert Zangari for providing me with a copy of this prequal to his Tales of the Amulet series. He recommended that I read this one before A Prince’s Errand, but I’m a stickler for reading books in publication order. However, this didn’t negatively impact the story of either books in any meaningful way, and if anything, made me appreciate some of the lore gaps that were filled in this book. As with the last two books, I’ll refer to Dan and Robert Zangari (a father and son team) as the Zangaris throughout, hoping that is the correct way to make a plural out of their last names.

So, to begin at the beginning. This book follows an ill-fated expedition to what the myths within the world of Kalda claim to be their version of damnation: Tardalim. The story primarily follows Amendal Aramien, a young conjurer freshly returned from his vaunted family’s rite of passage to become a fully realised Aramien conjurer. We get the third-person perspectives of Amendal and a scattering of his friends and associates as they set out to the frozen Abodine Wastes to locate Tardalim and the supposed treasures within. We also get a fair bit of story from a Mindolarnian royal who instigated the expedition, but for the life of me I can’t find the correct way to spell her name ANYWHERE, so I’m just going to refer to her as Miss Mindolarnian. Honestly, I’d rather refer to her by something less tame and more insulting, but that goes to show how well her character was written to make me have such a deep loathing for this velvet-draped turd. 

The relationships between the core group of mages that undertake the expedition is one of the highlights of the book. You believe they are friends and the further connections that develop between them throughout the story are entirely organic. As with their other works, the Zangaris are masters of writing interpersonal relationships. All the main characters are well-rounded, but I did have a slight issue with some of the side characters, namely in that I personally don’t feel that the amount of time devoted to them was entirely necessary. The ship’s captain in particular and the expedition’s captain to a lesser extent had quite a high word-count which, combined with a few other aspects, significantly dropped the pacing of the middle of the book and turned it into a bit of a slog. I personally feel that a few minor changes to the story could have effectively removed the need for the large sections from their perspectives and maintained the otherwise sterling story-flow from the beginning constant throughout.

Tardalim itself is a truly novel location (to me at least), and uniqueness always scores extremely high from me within a genre that often keep regurgitating the same old fluff. If anything, I feel that for the amount of time and effort that was expended in creating and explaining how this insane prison works, there could have been even more interesting ways in which it was used. I can’t think of any myself, but I’m sure that the minds that crafted such a beautiful mind-fuck could have squeezed out even more awesome. This book also goes a lot further into explaining how the magic systems of Kalda work, which was something I definitely thought was lacking in A Prince’s Errand. I now have a far greater understanding of an aspect that is key to this universe and I am very appreciative for it. The book also has individual chapters between the five main parts from entirely different characters which greatly help with the world-building as well as the story structure which, had those chapters been shoehorned within the individual parts, would have been fairly disjoining. This technique, as well as the little introductory quotes at the start of each chapter (which I use in my own books) are techniques I personally love and, when used well, are an extremely useful story-writing tool.

My last point is less of a direct criticism and more of what I believe was a missed opportunity to hit what could have been quite a meaningful issue raised within the book. Without giving too much away, Miss Mindolarnian has a magic glove imbued with the power to make anyone she turns it on become besottedly infatuated with her. She uses this to both bed whoever she wants and manipulate anyone she cares to. What made me truly hate this character and what I believe was just skimmed over within the book is that that her actions are tantamount to rape. I know such a subject may have been a bit too dark of a topic for the book to go deep into, but it is present and it does happen to multiple characters. Had this been a man using it on women, then I have no doubt that the darker implications of using the glove would have been explored in greater detail, but because it is used against men, the severity of what she is doing seems to be treated far more lightly. The blaséness in which most of the characters react to finding out what the glove does in itself could have been a great topic to explore, namely that most of the male characters didn’t see much of a problem in a beautiful woman having her way with you, even though it is against your will. They all seem far more concerned with the fact that she has suborned their will rather than what she has done with them once their will has been suborned. Anyway, I just feel that it was a missed opportunity to explore what could have been a really meaningful topic.

So in summation, I thoroughly enjoyed the book but feel that the drop in pacing in the middle came dangerously close to stalling the entire story. The quality of the ending made up for it though, both the climax and the aftermath. I personally love it when all the loose ends are tied off as opposed to an abrupt ‘la fin’, and this book 100% delivered on that.

As for narration, as ever, Michael Kramer is one of the absolute best in the business, so any project he turns his voice to always comes out as first class.

Personal Score: 4.0 stars

Professional Score: 4.0 stars