Review: The Quest for Merlin: Magimakía

The Quest for Merlin: Magimakía by Rafael Lovato
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Magimakía; The Quest for Merlin by Brazilian author Rafael Lovato in two days. Its tone was light, slightly mocking, and ridiculous in a good way. It is written in a style that conveyed a sort of surrealistic Dead Sea Scrolls importance. The book was an enjoyable read even though there were points in the book that evoked disgust and were clearly designed to appeal to a guy's cruder sensibilities. It is clearly meant for an audience of teenage boys. The Portuguese to English translator used a mixture of American and British English with some typos, grammar quirks, and even some words I've never seen before. The plot included a merging of souls into one body. When a demon's soul is merged with a mage's soul, the result is called a necromancer. Merlin's long life is credited with another type of merge between a dragon and a mage. According to the book, a mage lives twice as long as a human, but Merlin lived at least 500 years and perhaps more. There were other mages with blue magical energy, dragons with orange magical energy, otherworldly angels with yellow magic energy, goblins with green magickal energy, trolls who consorted with goblins, and elves. The elven duals were a deadly competition to win the right to explore and exploit a world for a hundred years. Elysium was the world of the elves. Human mages and witches lived on Earth, which was called Magus. Witches created powerful potions in cauldrons and had other stereotypical witchy traits. Witches can turn into wraiths for a couple of hours, which was a creative feature. Witches were also known to have mind-controlling, seductive powers over male humans. However, a succubus was considered to be a type of demon, not a human. Daemonion was the world that belonged to the demons. Baratrum was the world of the dead. Oblivium was the world of the dragons. Angelicorum was the world of the angels. Three archangels, Rafael, Michael, and another one were mentioned as the supreme leaders who never left their world through any interdimensional portals. Angels and seraphs were portrayed as the bad guys who fought demons and goblins. Prayers could be heard by angels at the wrong times, such as in a church full of goblins. Goblinantrum was the world of the goblins. There was much character development of goblins as a species, including their snooping, gossiping nature. Their gossip is advertised to be truthful, dramatic, and interspersed with plenty of verbal and physical reactions. Goblins can also read minds. Humans can prevent inadvertent mental telepathy to goblins by invoking a spell that utilized imagery and conveyed intent to magical elements. I disagreed with the book's assertion that Latin was the language that magical elements understood the most because Sanskrit and other languages were older than Latin. Using Latin to cast spells is more likely a conventional feature of magic and is simply a stylistic characteristic. Overall, I recommend this book with reservations even though the author has a well-written, detailed style of writing.

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