Johan Haneveld's Reviews > The Days of the Deer

Fascinating to read a fantasy story that is not based on the usual medieval European background, like the stories of Tolkien and many of his successors. Tolkien purposefully started out to write a myth for England (as the Arthur stories are not really mythical), and most other fantasies have taken the same approach: faintly European milieu, with knights, horses, churches, nobles and kings, markettowns and castles, and lords and ladies. Often even the geography of the world (look at the maps) is vaguely European. I confess with my own stories I also follow this template. But the world is larger than just Europe, of course, and other continents have other mythologies to look to. This book, for example, is written by an Argentinean author, and is inspired by South-American history. The most European aspect of the story is the bad guy (who originates in the equivalent of Europe or Asia). Here we find jungles, tribes, wise women, llama’s, contact with animals, astronomers et cetera. Even the family values of the protagonists are weird to an individualist European like me. This makes for refreshing reading. The style is different too, compared with what I’m used to. It is based on oral story telling (again fitting the inspiration), and told in a ‘high style’, like it is a myth or legend passed down to new generations (a bit like the Silmarillion then, but more narrative parts). For the first few chapters this led to me being kept at a distance by the work, but soon there were plots and counterplots enough to keep my interest. The second half of the book I was fully into the story. This tale is complete, but there are threads left open for the sequel. I was very much interested in reading another book in this setting!