The Golden Key Book

This fantasy yarn written by three hands is surprisingly good, better than I'd expected, and though I came expecting very little, it ended up hooking me up and maintaining my interest till the end.

Whilst the plot is still fresh in my mind, having just closed the book, I could say that its strengths are:

- The story premise, which is the centuries-long saga of the Grijalvas, a family of prodigy painters who, in addition to their unsurpassed painting skills, possess magical blood that manifests itself only on the males but is passed on by the females. Novels about painters, there are a few, both about famous ones and made-up ones, but families? Entire families dedicated to art for centuries? Those are thin on the ground, and for anyone with at least a moderate interest in art, it's already a good selling point.

- The unique magic system. Though it's Fantasy, it's very low-fantasy, so much so that it could be easily mistaken for a HF novel with fancy names for known countries (Tira Virte = a mix of Spain and Italy, Ghillas = France, and so on). In this world, magical power is only in the hands of the Grijalvas, in their blood, and they can manipulate & influence people and events through painting them using a magical process they learnt from their ancestors, the Tza'ab (the Moors from real history). I had never read anything like this before, and the idea of using painting and portraiture as a means of control and protection was new and fascinating. This single-handedly kept my interest even during the slower portions of the story (which for me was Part I). I'm still so impressed by the originality of art as magical tool that I now want to go hunt for more books like this!

- The perfect blend of the three parts that comprise this book. The Golden Key is technically a single book, but once you've read it, you notice that in reality it's three books in one. A trilogy published in one single book, as Tolkien would call this type of stories. And despite each part being written by three different authors with different storytelling styles and different prose, all three stories ("The Bloody Key," "The Magic Key" & "The Golden Key") transition into each other smoothly, in spite of the time jumps and that each part has a new set of characters. I don't know how the authors managed this feat, I can only guess it took a lot of collaboration, excellent teamwork, and much editing. Parts I and II are more similar to each other in style and the closest in time, while Part I is easier to notice as different to the rest as well as the more distant in time.

- There's a lot of court intrigue and political scheming, for those readers who like it. And also romance, mystery, and a sprinkling of horror for those who like them also. It has everything for every taste, save for perhaps action sequences. But the comings and goings of all the characters compensate for this aplenty.

- For all that characters don't have that much time onstage, the characterisation is pretty good. The format is mainly Third Person Limited POV mixed with Third Person Omniscient, which is what gives each character their own traits and the readers insight into their heads whilst not limiting the scope to just them due to a restricted POV.

- The ending is pretty satisfying for what went down, and bittersweet as well. The resolution to the Villain Protagonist's arc was the most satisfying and best handled of all to me. I found him the best character, and by that I don't mean "the most likable" precisely.

And, sure, the novel does have also some weaknesses. Really one weakness, in my opinion, which would be:

- The language. And no, I don't mean the writers' prose. I mean the invented language of this secondary world. Tira Virteian, which is how it's called, is a very obvious and in-your-face bastardisation of Spanish, with a good seasoning of Italian and some loanwords from Portuguese. It shouldn't bother anyone, but it did irk me all the way throughout because... ah, let me see, I have a few reasons that are rather specific.

For one: the unoriginality of using an actual language currently spoken in our world and pass it off as a "fantasy language," with barely a layer of varnish that's too transparent to disguise it. I don't object to altering a real language to make it into an invented language for a fantasy novel, but given that this is a language I actually master, I can't help but notice the low-effort handling of said language.

For two: the little effort put into "inventing" a fictional language is going to be too blatantly obvious to speakers of this language, especially because the most obvious alteration is as jarring as nails on a chalkboard. I'm speaking of the incorrect use of gender. In Spanish, as well as in Italian and Portuguese, there are three genders: male, female, and neutral. And often, "neutral" can be (confusingly for non-natives) masculine or feminine in usage. For example, momentito (a moment, in diminutive) is "masculine" even though it's grammatically gender-neutral, but the authors made it be momentita in Tira Virteian, which is feminine. And there's just too many cases of this gender mess-up. Corazón mio (My heart) is always masculine even if you're telling that to a woman, but in this book, it's corasson meya or corasson meyo depending on whether it's a man or woman you tell that. Suerte (luck) is neutral and becomes suerta (feminine), Agua (water) is neutral though it sounds feminine and it becomes aguo (masculine), noche (night) is feminine and becomes nocto (masculine), dulce (sweet) is always neutral and becomes dolcha and dolcho (masculine & feminine), the article el (the) is masculine and la would be the feminine form, but in the novel it's inconsistently either Il (masculine) for both male and female and Ila for the feminine form. And so on, the list is long. So annoying!

For three: most if not all of the words and phrases in the invented Tira Virteian language are uncreatively modified by merely adding an extra letter, generally R or S (probably because of the native pronunciation of Spanish), and other times it reads like a misspelling according to how Anglophones would (mis)pronounce it in Spanish. And so to someone who speaks Spanish, it would look like simply either misspelt or mispronounced words rather than a new language.

For last, but not least: the names are also very odd for anyone who speaks Spanish or is from Spain/Latin America. There are people named after cities and there are surnames used as given names. For example, the Lord Limner we first meet is called Zaragosa Serrano. Really? Does that sound plausible? Who of you have known someone called after the city of Zaragoza? Not me, that's for sure. Then take the name of the main female protagonist, Saavedra Grijalva. Well... Saavedra is actually a surname, it exists in the real world, and though in English it's not unusual for people to have surnames as their given names, in Spanish it's very rare. It's more common that a name becomes a surname, with or without the addition of ez (which is like the ending son in English). There's people with the name Javier/Xavier/Xabier as their surnames, to give one example, as well as people with the names Ramón, Miguel and Adrián as surnames. But you'd be hard-pressed to find someone with Jiménez, Torres, Cortés, etc., as their first names.

This almost made me knock 1 star off my rating. But I loved the story a lot, and when I think it over some more, this would look like a minor issue that probably nobody else will be bothered by. Besides, this belongs in the English-speaking publishing sphere, is written by authors that probably don't speak any of the languages used here (or not very well), and hasn't been translated into Spanish as far as I know. So, whilst I'm curious to see how other readers that speak this language would react, it's probably a trifle, more apt to be due to my personal reader's quirks than anything else. So, it's going to keep its five shiny stars for all its strengths and for the week-long enjoyment.