Bernardo Cicchetti

Synopsys:
The voyages of a man through different worlds, to restore his own and find what he really thrives to be.
Plot Outline:
The story opens with the description of the main conflict: a piece of the statue that is maintaining the world balance is crumbling. To worsen the situation the material this piece is made of, the drimite, was all used to make this unique piece. The statue situation is paralleled by the world itself: the nature is decaying, animals and humans mutate and time locally hastens, slows or even stops.
While the head of the mages is surveying the world, one of his two higher level apprentices is dreaming, or to better say is walking in a dream-world. The master, thinking those dreams are alternative realities, asks Heron to check if in that world the drimite is present. The mage discovers how his dream world is similar and different from his own, and discovers he is not the only one searching for the material: parallel worlds are in a similar condition. He found that in his dream world the statue is still being made and the mineral is present but he cannot transfer it to his world without exchanging it with the same weight of material. Naked and without his homunculus he returns to his world and hands the mineral to his master.
Called the next morning Heron and Kalamon, the other apprentice, found that after half of the gland was created, it was stolen by one of his master parallels through a mirror reflection, then they are tested to find who will be able to retrieve the gland. Heron seems to be more prepared, and departs again. Using the mirror in his room he travels to an opposite world: a creepy one where the loss of balance is creating gentle oasis. He finds his master copy but before the battle can even begin, the copy collapses. As he recover the piece of the statue an alarm system resound in the manor so he cannot return to his room, he has to find another mirror and, from mirror to mirror, from world to world, travel back, where he find his own master dead, killed by the hand of one of his own copy and a court assembled to judge him.
Analysis:
The author uses a classical fantasy plot: the search for the device; and the clique sci-fi idea of the parallels worlds to write an interesting story driven novella of travel and wit, where the action description is preferred to the characters development. One of the book’s strong points is how the author adapts the rhythm to the scenes, another one is how the themes are used: the search gives the energy and interests the reader, the parallels worlds, just a step apart, are the, one glimpse to describe, twists. Of the plot devices used the left-right exchange of mirror reflection is well thought and coherent in the whole book, foreshadowing one of the main character’s defense line in the court scene.
The style is clear: the jumps to different points of view are clearly stated by ending a paragraph or by italics; an example of the latter is when a ghost, that cannot be heard or saw, speaks. There is a practical use of a third person omniscient being for some of the few descriptions.
The character description is lacking, instead the author uses manners of speech, for example Zephiro is the only one that uses archaic words and the homunculi changes how they speak during their condensed life, one month, as we all do.… (més)