(Observation: I did read this book in Brazilian Portuguese and this is my native language, but since I usually share my reviews on Facebook as well and a couple of friends of mine don't speak Portuguese and read my book reviews, I thought it would only be fair to review this book in English as well)

Among the Brazilian contemporary authors, Affonso Solano is probably one of the best ones I have read so far in terms of literary style. In this book, he uses a very pleasant, formal language. People usually twist their noses when they see someone adopting a more formal writing style, but I thought that it was quite befitting in this case. Nevertheless, Solano's writing never really feels "artificially formal". In spite of a couple of grammar errors, the book overall was very well written and managed to deliver a rather fluid reading.

That being said, I wasn't that much of a fan of the story itself. The characters were consistent, yet did not seem to "shine" in any specific moment of the book. The pirates felt very... dislocated, but maybe this is just the way the author decided to portray them, which is fine to me.
I wasn't a big fan of the fact that there is a big mystery revolving Adapak, the main character, but the whole plot is only explained in the last few pages of the book. I feel that the author could have dosed and distributed the whole thing throughout the pages little by little, involving the reader more than just spilling all the content in the end of the book.

One thing I did not appreciate in the book was the enormous amount of sci-fi elements that ran unexplained through the story. Affonso Solano created a vast universe that is almost completely different from the world we know, yet spent little time talking about the creatures, which bothered me because it made it hard to actually picture how they looked like. Sometimes I was given only names and was left to figure out by myself what the hell the creature was and what it looked like. You eventually get used to it, but it is kinda tiring.

I also thought it was kinda sad to see that certain characters got involved with Adapak, but they had little importance to the plot itself. I think that, since their paths was already interwoven anyway, might as well form an alliance or something. But that's just me.

This is an interesting option for those who like fantasy sci-fi books in the Star Wars/Mass Effect style. ( )