“You do realize that by limiting yourself thus you are depriving your family of comfort and riches?”

“Oh, you third-reachers!” laughed Siloán. “You have so much that your hearts have become small. You can live very well with very little. Sometimes, it is better this way.”

It isn’t immediately apparent that Nicholas Kotar’s The Song of the Sirin is not typical English-oriented fantasy. Somewhere after the hunt of the white stag, the interaction with the otherworldly wolf, and everything the Pilgrim says, I began to think I didn’t know the terms the writer used. Not knowing anything about Russian folklore, I had no knowledge base to foresee the possibilities in a name or type.

The kingdom of Vasyllia is in decline with an elderly monarch, called the Dar. Three castes of people stir up plenty of political tension, having little more to do than look out for themselves. The young man Voran and his teenaged sister Lebía are orphans of a wealthy family, but their opportunities are limited by the suspicious circumstances of their parents’ deaths; their father, Otchigen, may have betrayed the king to save himself when the people in a distant embassy were slaughtered.

Voran draws more suspicion to himself when he brings a Pilgrim into the city and professes to believe everything he says. The old stories about the divine Covenant and mythical beasts like sirin (an eagle with feathers like gems and the head and torso of a woman) were just a nice cultural basis. There was no living water dripping from a weeping tree. No Raven monster seeking that water along with the destruction of all mankind.

But, of course, the old stories are true, and Voran will be accused by the ignorant and deceived by wily spirits before he begins a long trial of endurance to set the kingdom right again.

Some dark moments in the story are handled carefully, which I appreciate. My main quibble with the writing is the sentences that push toward colorful language where sparse prose would fit the scene better.

The Song of the Sirin is book one of the five-book Raven Son series. While it ends satisfactorily, there’s still a lot of ongoing conflict. I don’t know what to expect in book two, which I picked up with the first one.

This book is currently free for Kindle.