Las Siete Torres

Calification: 7/10.
Estile: Young Adult/Gothic/Semi-apocalyptic.
Size: 6 books, around 100 pages (PDF) each.
Recommendation: There are better books but it fit for a sleepy afternoon with nothing better to do.

Overview: The setting [and one of its strongest points,] is done in a Death-World called the DarkWorld. Thanks to a worldwide magical Veil that had left the planet in a eternal night and ushered an Ice age. This was done over three thousand years ago at the climax of a War against beings of beyond, but it’s not explained who or why the lack of sun would help humanity to survive.

Humanity is divided in two cultures: The chosen and The Icecarls. The chosen are a pseudo magic race that ive at the tip of a nameless mountain in seventh towers, wich mantain the vail of darkness. They are governed in a extremely hierarchized Magiocracy where the type of Light you can conjure by the sun crystals and your own accomplishment determine your color (from green to Violet) or if you must be one of the underfork and live in eternal servitude.

The Icercarls are you typical barbaric Tundra people. Harsh, mystic, violent but with a brave and pure center like the snow desert they must endure to survive. They are commanded by the crones, oracles/witches who can communicate with each other by a generational communal link and can access to the memories of any crone down to the first generation. They are served by their own version of police: The Shield Maidens. Ferocious warriors and the best of the best the Icecarls can offer, who mantain a realitvely peace, help the hunt and to eliminate some of the most terrible creatures that roam the DarkWorld.

Both cultures as expected remain ignorant of each other for thousands of years until yari, yari, yara.

The third "race" if you want to call it like that are the Spiritshadows, creatures from the Aenir, the spirit world who are bound by the Chosen to serve as their guardians and grant them power by giving their Natural shadow, allowing them to come to the material world. For the Chosen spiritshadows are the greatest tool and the undeniable proof you are one of the superior breed while the Icecarls fear and loathe the "demon shadow" with pure passion. Needless to say, when both cultures found one another is not a peace treaty that was broken.

The story: In two words: shit happens. In longer words, well... The entire plot bolt down that Tal, a red level mage, absolute needs of a Sunstone before the ascension, when he would make the transition to adulthood where he would confine a true spiritshadow for the rest of his life but disaster occur when his parent went missing and is pressumed dead. If this was not enough his father had the only true sunstone of the family, the mother is heavily sick and Shadowmaster sushin honestly hate him, destroying two of his only options and forcing him to try to steal one from the Tip of the Red Tower, outside the veil. Things went down to hell and one nearly dead experience, he found himself in the iceland and found by brave warrior/trigger happy sociopath Milla. Culture clash ensues and he found himself in a quest to return a Sunstone form him and for Milla clan and soon they found embroiled in a plot that could bring down the destruction of both cultures and the world they know permanently.

Criticism: The book (and the Author), are not for everyone and the story and it can have negative reactions to many readers. While it look at first hand as the typic Children adventure (couple of children most confront and otherworldly, possible magical, negative force to save the world/city/love ones while adults, with some exempts, are unhelpful, indifferent or part of the enemies) its much more like that. It's complex, jumping from POV to POV, touching many themes as: freedom, culture clash, sense of honor, duty and its extremes, the chains of commands and what sacrifices must be made to save one world above all else. It's gritty (sometimes needless so), is harsh, its a little boring and had a rather warped sense of humor between mad dash for safety and brief but brutal battles. The reader know nothing about the world, the character and most of the time, what is the problem and the enemie and must discover it along with the characters.

For me, it was so-so. Seventh towers with all his originality, flesh-ish out characters and, if it not completed explained story, it doesn't let you filling confused in any part of the story, at least for a couple of minutes after finishing it, it just too... not dark, but too pessimistic vague, troperrific, sometimes empty and another Narmtastic and the battles are hardly explained even when they put a lot of effort to expand and many times it can come as anticlimactic and the way its told... there are times that it bores me. The epilogue seemed rushed and while happy it got the same problem as Harry potter sagara... it simply not my cup of coffee.

Not bad, but not something to write home about it.

But be warned again, It is not a child tale or even for preteens, no matter what kind of mark is put by the publishers. Its violent, its complex, its somewhat ambiguous, many of the character are all out jerkass and annoying and it can look stupid in the inside.

Even so, give it a check. If you don't like it by page 23, just let it down and read something else.