Book Review: Seven Serpents & Seven Moons

Page Created: 10/26/11. Last Updated: 10/26/11.

SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS

Demetrio Aguilera-Malta

Translated by Gregory Rabassa

Avon-Bard Books $ 3.50 or $ 3.95

(Note: the older, cheaper edition can still be found in some stores.)

SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS is the most famous work of Ecuadorian author Demetrio Aguilera-Malta. Although very well known in South America and acclaimed as his country’s greatest author, only three of his novels have been translated into English so far and two of them, DON GOYO and MANUELA, are available only in small-run hardcover editions. The Avon-Bard editions of SEVEN SERPENTS (two paperback and one hardcover printing) are the first time Aguilera-Malta has been able to reach a large United States audience.

SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS is a torturous book. Its plot does not follow anything like the straight line North American fantasy novels follow. Instead, the story progresses by flashbacks and flashforwards, beginning near the end of the story, flashing back to the beginning, moving on to seemingly unrelated incidents whose significance is not revealed until subsequent flashbacks, until the tale finally doubles back to the events occurring after chapter one for its final chapter. Only by reading the book to its very end can the reader understand the whole plot.

The plot is the old one of good vs evil, set in the possibly mythological province of Santoronton. The major good characters are the tough old priest, Father Candido—a fighting priest if ever there was one,--Doctor Juvinico and Clotilde, both basically good characters warped by bad experiences (the doctor the infidelity of his beloved, the girl by memory of rape, the murder of her parents, and a horrifying bout with madness), and the Burnt Christ. This last is a specialized manifestation of Jesus, a slightly singed wooden statue of the Savior which regularly comes to life, apparently animated by the real Christ, who gets down off His cross to either help or argue with Father Candido.

There are two major villains, each of whom pursues a totally different objective. The first is Colonel Candelario Marisca, a charismatic bad guy on par with any villain ever played by Ricardo Monteban or voiced by James Earl Jones. Mariscal is an abandoned orphan raised by Father Candido but suspected of being Satan’s own son, a man of uncontrollable passions and temper who graduates from drunkenness to arson to murder and rape and finally to the wholesale military banditry and pillaging which accompany every South American revolution. A colonel due to his part in the revolution, blessed with seemingly supernatural powers, Mariscal manages to achieve the nearly impossible, namely capture the reader’s sympathy. Despite the fact we know he’s a murderer, thief, arsonist, rapist, drunkard, and turns into a crocodile at times, the reader sees the Colonel punished for every crime he commits one way or another, haunted by the ghost of a woman he desired (and who managed to avoid being either raped or murdered by him in life, I might add), and driven by something inside him he cannot understand or control. By the end of the book, the Colonel is making an earnest effort to reform and find peace and forgiveness, even though he does threaten people who deny his ability to reform with a machete in the second to last chapter.

The second villain, Christomato Chalena, with his back up of goons, sycophants, and a weakling priest, lacks the sympathetic qualities of Mariscal. It is his actions that provide the basis for the principal storyline of the book, as he enslaves, corrupts and beggars an entire community with the help of Satan by the simple expedient of gaining control of the entire water supply. He is a menace to all around him, reducing his neighbors to debt slaves, making his employees into vicious hired thugs, performing an unbelievable atrocity on a helpless child (letting a parasitic plant grow on the boy so he can see the pretty “roses” bloom) and of course doing violence to those who oppose him in any way. The colonel may endanger those around him like a crocodile, but Chalena is like a hurricane—you cannot be anywhere in his vicinity without being hurt. Most of the novel involves the efforts of various characters, including Colonel Mariscal to pull the area loose from his grasp.

A major facet of the storyline is the growth of each character as the plot progresses. Exceptions to this process are Chalena and Satan, who makes only one appearance and is portrayed as a jaded cynic. The Colonel reforms. Father Candido becomes less bull-headedly stubborn and vindictive towards his once adopted son. Doctor Juvenico changes from a bitter and stupid cynic to a warm, patient man. Clotilde slowly outgrows being a deranged wild girl who fantasizes about castrating every man in the territory. Even the Burnt Christ shows different facets, coming across as a tired complainer at the beginning of the book, as he unwillingly helps Candido row his boat, to a sharp-tongued commentator, to the personification of a wronged and angry God as He confronts Chalena’s pet priest, and finally as the forgiving Sunday School Jesus who urges Candido to forgive at the end of the book. This idea of eventual redemption is different from the usual fantasy, where the characters on the whole may be a little more knowledgeable at the end of the book, but nothing more.

Also unlike most United States or English fiction (not just fantasy) is the way Aguilera-Malta handles the violence and sex scenes. Bloody murders and sordid rapes are described in horrifying detail, yet the author does not dwell on it with drooling tongue or pretended horror shock as many of our own country’s authors would. He makes the violence and sex part of the story, not special highlights told from a different perspective than the rest of the tale.

Unlike our local authors (at least in the Heroic Fantasy field) SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS takes place in a real setting, a village that, if fictional, at least could have been a real Ecuadorian village back in the 1960’s when this book was written, not some manufactured medieval or Roman Empire setting. Real problems of the author’s country are shown, the main being the menace of criminals who become rich by unscrupulous means and then can choke whole communities by acquiring illegal monopolies of one commodity. The rich victimizing the poor has been popular since before Robin Hook, but you get the impression that Aguilra-Malta has some real person in mind when he portrays Chalena.

The fantastic and supernatural events are done strangely. Some obviously occur only in the characters’ minds, some equally obviously do actually happen, and some are left up to the reader to decide whether they are happening or not. Some of the more fantastic scenes stick in the mind after reading the novel: the early battle to the Tine-tine dwarves (vulgar little beings with huge phalluses, who use their oversize members to hit each other over the head), the traditional rescue of the doctor by grateful monkeys he had earlier helped, the ugly witchdoctor and his pretty daughter, who appear again and again in the story, the appearances of Christ and the Devil, both of whom are much more a part of this world than they are traditionally portrayed.

For those who do not mind a story told in a really different style, try SEVEN SERPENTS AND SEVEN MOONS.

Aguilera-Malta is a rather obscure author in this country, but a number of other Latin American writers who use fantastic material have been widely published in the U. S. in English translations. They include Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina, Jorge Amado and Julio Cortazar of Brazil, Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia, and Miguel Asturias of Guatemala. Marquez, Cortazar and Asturias all claim they were influenced by Aguilera-Malta’s earlier writings. While only a portion of their work can truly be considered fantasy, it is a portion well worth becoming acquainted with.

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