A review by silkcaramel
Filhos da Degradação by Felipe Castilho

3.0

“Alguns infernos duram mil anos; outros, um dia. Mas nenhum é melhor que outro.”

This was a good surprise - it's been a while since a national book got my attention, especially a fantasy one. The world-building here is very interesting, I liked the characters and there were a few good surprises along the way. The way it flitted from past to present, slowly revealing how things reached the point we see in the prologue, kept me interested. I recognized some Brandon Sanderson influences here (there were a LOT of parallels with Mistborn), as well as Tolkien ones, but you can see they were just inspirations because the author managed to create his own thing, his own mythology.

That being said, there was a rhythm problem - it takes a while for the story to unfold, and while I understand the need to present the world, the characters and get the readers used to everything, I think it took longer than it should. After things started to happen, though, the pages flew by. Although not totally amazing (throughout the entire thing I had a sense I've read something like this before), it was a solid introduction to what I'm guessing will be a trilogy, and I really think there's a lot to expand on here and by the end, there is this interesting path I see the story walking towards. I'm curious for volume 2, hopefully this will become a strong Brazilian fantasy series to rival with any famous ones.