3.5 stars http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...Young Damiano Delstrego is now the head of his house after his father, a witch, was killed when a spell went horribly wrong. Damiano is also a musician, an alchemist, and a witch, but he’s a good Christian, too, and he tries to use his powers only for good. That’s why he refused to help the army who came to take over his town, though they offered him riches. Instead, Damiano decides to follow the townsfolk who’ve fled for the hills. He wants to warn them that the army plans to find and plunder them. He’s particularly worried about Carla, the girl he has a crush on. He also wants to seek the aid of a powerful sorceress.So, with an Italian medieval village behind him and the towering Alps ahead, Damiano sets off in the snow with his lute and his beloved talking dog, Macchiata. Along the way, Damiano has a few mishaps, witnesses brutal deeds done by Roman soldiers, gets some inspiration from the archangel Rafael, finds out some uncomfortable facts about his father, and is offered a deal by the devil. He also learns that there’s more to life than his dog, his lute, and Carla.Damiano is the first volume of R.A. MacAvoy’s DAMIANO trilogy, a historical fantasy set in Renaissance Italy. MacAvoy’s prose is lovely and she makes the most of her setting, with allusions to real historical people, events, religious beliefs, literature, and art. The story takes place in winter and all the brutal events that Damiano witnesses seem especially vile when set against the whiteness of the winter alpine landscape.I didn’t love the plot as much as I loved the writing and the setting, but this is more of a personal preference rather than any problem with the plot itself. Though it depicts some ugly events, Damiano, his talking dog, and the beautiful angel were a little too sweetly innocent for me. The main focus is Damiano’s struggle with his desire to use his powers for good and his discovery that sometimes it’s hard to know what’s right and wrong. He’s also worried about his soul because Satan has informed him that, since he’s a witch, he’s automatically damned. I didn’t find this to be riveting subject matter, but I thought the excellent writing made up for it.Though the DAMIANO books were marketed to adults, I think this coming of age story will be appealing to teenagers, and it’s certainly written more beautifully than most YA fantasy is. It’s so lovely, in fact, that I plan to try the second book, Damiano’s Lute. This story has plenty of potential. I’m listening to Audible Frontiers’ version and am very pleased with Nicholas Tecosky’s narration.
This book, and this series, I loved as a young adult, but it has been out-of-print for years. It recently came out on the Kindle directly from the author and I immediately purchased all three.Re-reading this time they held their own — and even offered more, as my palette is more refined. Each stands reasonably well alone, which is rare for a series, and each is very different, which too is rare for a series. I highly recommend it.
What do You think about Damiano (1984)?
(This review may contain spoilers).I remember reading, when I was a child, a book called Raphael and that it was part of a set of books, though I couldn't remember how many. Typing the title into Amazon brought up the book that was the third in this trilogy. I still couldn't remember if it was the right one, but the image on the cover looked about right.Since the whole trilogy was available on Kindle, I purchased the three of them and just finished the first book now. I didn't think it would be as good as I thought, because I'm an adult now, but I was wrong.I liked the characters in this book - all of them, even the minor ones. Well, there was one exception - I'm not a particular fan of brutes in fiction. I found the book quite intense and Damiano was an easy character to relate to. I also liked his relationship with Raphael and with his dog, who was adorable and sweet.This was definitely well worth reading again. And the author's portrayal of Lucifer was creepy, in some ways, and very well-done, in my opinion.
—Sarah Briggs
I stopped reading fantasy for a long time because all I saw was a field suffocated with Tolkien clones. But those books weren't just bad because Tolkien had already given us the swords and the creatures and the magic; they were also bad because they missed a huge part of what made Tolkien great: the feeling that Middle Earth was beautiful, wonderful and terrible.RA MacAvoy's Damiano has that best part of fantasy. Damiano is set in a medieval Italy not as we see it but as the medieval Italians might have seen it, replete with angels and witches. The main character is her greatest triumph, however: a young witch trying to do the right things with his terrible power and his innocent inexperience. If you have any interest in fantasy - even if you thought that interest destroyed, as I did - you won't regret picking this one up.
—Michael O.
