Twelve Kings in Sharakai

Twelve Kings in Sharakai offers a by-the-book revenge story with a unique twist: the protagonist wants to avenge her mother’s death and murder the twelve rulers of the desert city of Sharakai, but the problem is that her foes are… immortal. Written by Bradley P. Beaulieu, the novel has a strong, well-developed protagonist, but it’s also plagued by constant flashbacks, which only serve to bring down the pace of the story.

The first time we are presented to Çeda, the novel’s nineteen-year-old protagonist, she’s fighting before a crowded arena. Her enemy is a huge, muscular man, but she’s quick to make him underestimate her, using his mistake to win the fight. Afterward, we find that Çeda lives multiple lives. Sometimes, she fights as a gladiator to make some money under the alias “White Wolf”, making certain Witchers proud. At night, she runs clandestine packages for her boss and occasional lover, Osman. And, during the day, she fakes a limp and pretends to be a normal girl, who teaches swordplay in the great amber city of Sharakai. But, above all else, and at all times, she is nurturing her hatred against Sharakai’s twelve rulers and planning her revenge against them.

One day, Çeda is tasked by Osman to deliver a package during a sacred, but dangerous night: the night when the Asiri – cadaverous creatures with black lips and a pale, stretched skin – roam the streets for the kings in search of people to kill in a blood offering to the gods. She enlists the help of her longtime friend Emre, but that is not enough: when the delivery goes awry, Çeda stumbles upon secrets regarding Sharakai’s resistance group, the Moonless Host, and thinks she now must redouble her efforts in planning her attack and against the city’s rulers.

Çeda’s obsession with revenge can be clearly seen through her careless actions. There’s a scene in which she’s dueling in Sharakai’s pits and her attention is much more focused on a man in the audience, who is related to her quest, than on the one who is about to hit her with a sword. When she finds herself in the middle of a terrorist attack against one of the kings, her first thoughts are about seizing that opportunity to join the attack against him, which almost costs her life. This is a pattern: Çeda often puts her revenge above even her own life, which inevitably leads her to commit foolish and reckless acts.

The only thing that matters to Çeda as much as her revenge is her best friend, Emre. Emre, however, is a problematic character. The narrative wants us to care for him because the protagonist cares for him. He’s the only person she truly loves: Emre is Çeda’s emotional anchor in the world, the person who was always there beside her during the worst moments of her life, always offering support and a shoulder for her to cry on.

The problem is that Emre’s main trait is being highly hypocritical. There is a scene in which he judges a girl for not taking care of the cruel but old noblewoman she was hired to help – even calling her “wicked” for have been stealing from the house and neglecting her duties towards the woman.  However, he was only there to take advantage of the girl’s trust and steal information from the old woman himself. His outrage towards the girl, then, makes the reader stand much more against him than against her. Emre is always quick to judge everyone and think he has taken the moral high ground, but he also decides to work for the people that, while trying to beat the kings, usually hurt more the common folk than their real targets. In other words, the narrative wants us to care for Emre, but doesn’t make it easy to do so.

The novel is at its best when it’s focusing only on Çeda and her quest for revenge. She is driven and ruthless, but also kind to the people around her. She lives on because and despite the trauma of watching the body of her mother hanging on the streets when she was a child. Her investigation into the kings, to find any weakness she can exploit, leads her to a mystical path filled with old legends, and secrets hidden in poems that will make her discover more things about herself than about her nemeses. Çeda is – besides Emre – utterly alone, and it’s telling that when she manages to infiltrate the enemy ranks for a few days she starts to get attached to them, despite their job. She even feels hurt when she’s told that they will never love her.

The narrative, however, also follows three more points of view. We follow Emre as he tries to join the Moonless Host, but in chapters that only serve to push us to dislike him. We also follow the warrior of a foreign tribe who wants revenge on the leader of the Moonless Host, making a nice counterpoint to Çeda by showing how injustice and revenge make a vicious circle – even though his existence hardly matters to the main plot. Actually, the whole subplot involving the Moonless Host’s plan doesn’t seem to get anywhere in this book, feeling like a teaser for the sequels, as well as anything related to this foreign warrior. And, finally, we also have access to one of the kings.

Sharakai is a desert city, filled with spice markets, secret alleyways, and dangerous people. It’s ruled with an iron fist by twelve kings, said to be immortal after making a compact with the gods. They’re ruthless oppressors, who constantly murder innocent children and put their bodies on display on the streets just to make a point. During the first chapters, they’re depicted as one-dimensional villains; unscrupulous monsters that anyone should be quick to root against. Eventually, we get to follow the point of view of one of them, but that comes with its own share of problems. After all, the kings work better when they are depicted as intangible, inscrutable beings, for these characteristics make them more fearsome villains. One of them is even called the King of Whispers, because he’s supposed to hear everything that is said in the city, being almost omniscient. Consequently, when the narrative presents the point of view of one of them, it makes them feel more real and… weak. Their chapters only show them plotting against themselves and serve only to break their aura of invincibility.

The narrative is also rife with pointless flashbacks that mostly serve to pad the book’s length, barely influencing Çeda’s journey. They basically show things that were already told to us before. Some characters comment on the death of a dear friend, and then there is a flashback showing that death. Çeda shows unease when around the man who raised her, hinting that they share a troubled history, but then that troubled history is shown in flashbacks. Çeda loved her mother and is tormented by her last actions towards her, and the book goes on to show what happened in a series of flashbacks. At first, these flashbacks help ground the characters and the setting, but since they never end, they eventually become a serious problem: it’s unnecessary padding that plagues not only the beginning and the middle of the book, but also its third and final act, interrupting the action precisely when it should unfold without pause.

Finally, we also have the fact that Twelve Kings in Sharakai was written as the first chapter of a long series of books without much plot to sustain that length. In other words, Çeda has twelve enemies at the beginning of the book, and at its conclusion, she doesn’t have much less. The book may be six hundred pages long, but this length is mostly due to unnecessary points of view and flashbacks, since very few plotlines really reach a resolution.

Twelve Kings in Sharakai has a simple premise and a good, strong protagonist. If it doesn’t mark a great start for its series, The Song of the Shattered Sands, it’s only because it often decides to focus its attention on other more uninteresting elements.

March 05, 2020.