Spot Shelf: Mambabarang, Half-Kapre + More in Joel Donato Ching Jacob’s Orphan Price
This young adult novel is published by Scholastic Asia.
(SPOT.ph) Readers of fantasy tropes often straddle a fine line between the scourge of universal relatability and banality. We enjoy the familiar but hate the clichés. Joel Donato Ching Jacob’s Orphan Price, a sequel to the award-winning Wings of the Locust, seems to find the right coalesce giving the readers much more than what they have bargained for.
Orphan Price is richly rooted in Philippine history and culture, set during pre-colonial times. The context is familiar to Filipinos but is also becoming distant, like memory details that fade over time, preserving only the main gist. Reading this book provides the best view of that fading memory, reimagined into a riveting, vibrant story that Filipinos can easily identify with.
The book narrates the story of four characters: Tuan, Gilas, Fangren, and Liksi. Tuan is a mambabarang, someone who practices the art of using insects for espionage, sabotage, and healing. Gilas is a half-kapre—a race of large, sulfur-smelling, and tobacco-smoking giants. Fangren is an angat, a race of traders; and Liksi, a batibot, a trained warrior, and the only female in the group.
They are sent to a neighboring barangay called Pinagwagian to investigate the death of a matriarch of a ruling clan, the Maginoo. Did she really die of a natural death or of kulam, a curse that manifests as an incurable disease? With the mother’s death, the leadership is passed on to the 10-year-old boy, Bingkan.
From here on, readers journey with these uniquely interesting characters as they discover a community and the power struggle that goes on between the ruling clan and the indentured class, the Alipin. Power always takes place in the framework of a certain ideology. It is interesting how Jacob puts this into context, the value of freedom in society fettered with social constructs and traditional norms.
There is also Jacob’s take on the value of friendship and how one is to keep singularity amidst cultural diversity and individual differences. To imagine a half-kapre in conflict with a mambabarang on how one ought to live provides readers not just their ideologies but their distinctiveness.
"What if I were cruel all my life, but I was just too weak to do anything about it."
"Then I would remind you of the times when you had to be kind because you were weak, how that needed strength too. That kindness gave you strength too," Gilas couldn't say how those times also made him feel.
For fans of The Lord of the Rings, this book is reminiscent of that genre. But the worldbuilding, plot, and characterization deeply originated in Filipino myth and folklore.
The value of myths and legends is basic to social tradition because they constitute part of our social heritage. Books that are rich in Filipino mythology are scant these days, if they are available, they rarely get recognition and appreciation. Most of us have become more adept with internationally oriented mythology so much that we are slowly being detached and unfamiliar with our local folklore.
This book is elaborately integrated into Filipino myths and folktales. Our forefathers believed in many divinities inhabiting the surrounding. Unknowingly, many of them have survived modern times. In the parlance of Filipino folk magic, Orphan Price gives readers a rich purview of how usog, gaway, barang, and kulam came about.
One thing that readers will enjoy is Jacob’s descriptive style of writing making it easy to imagine and reimagine. Whether he is narrating a ritual, chronicling a scenic environment, or describing how food is being prepared, readers will bask in the details that the scenes will naturally and effortlessly come alive. How he brews words and minces them into fine details will blow the reader’s mind away.
Jacob’s prowess in storytelling is greatly showcased in that particular scene wherein Gilas was intently observing Banig-banig’s movement when the four youths met the young Bingkan and his father, Bulawan.
"Banig-banig moved smoothly, like a slow trickle of honey. Her skirt did not swish, her bangles did not tinkle. The grass beneath her feet was not crushed. Instead, it brightened, greener than ever."
Even so, there will also be times when one has to stop reading to think it over and reread the narratives, checking if one’s own "reimagination" was close to what the text was feeding.
Non-Filipino readers might not have as much affinity for the narratives but appreciation will come into play with how the story is interwoven. It is also good to know that the book is backed with a glossary of foreign words so that the story becomes easy to contextualize. There might be some effort in processing this book, but it will surely be worth every reader’s while.
Orphan Price (Scholastic Asia, 2022) by Joel Donato Ching Jacob is available on Lazada for P397.57 and at Mt. Cloud Bookshop in Baguio City. You can also pre-order through National Bookstore and Fully Booked.