Author: Thomas Locke
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
This novel is supposedly written by Thomas Locke but it’s copyrighted to T. Davis Bunn. It begins with your usual fantasy trope of an orphan kid raised in ignorance of what he is, which I have to say has become far too tedious. In this case the kid is Hyam - 'a simple farmer's son' who has massive magical powers, but doesn’t come into them until he's 'of age' (for reasons unexplained) whereupon, despite having had no training whatsoever, is an immediate expert in wielding said powers. Note that I didn't read this entire novel, so perhaps things were explained later. I just couldn't hold the interest to sit around waiting in the hope that something would make sense eventually.
Hyam is a farm boy whose mom died, and when he goes to the mage school to tell his dad (his magician dad wouldn't know - and why would he care?!), he discovers his dad died four years earlier. He goes back to the farm and finds he can magically turn over the earth in arrow-straight rows for planting instead of having to dig. He doesn’t even have to say two words in Latin to get this to work!
How did this happen? How is it possible? How is the magic channeled? No explanation. When a band of knights on giant horses arrives at this secret location which only Hyam knows about, with no explanation for how they happened upon him, Hyam is able to use his 'earth powers' to bury them without a trace. How does he know what to do? Where does his power come from and how does he grasp how to manipulate it? No explanation. It’s just "magical"!
The next character to show up is Joelle, a female wizard who is undoubtedly going to join with Hyam (one way or another). She's wielding her own magic ready to fight someone and we’re told she no longer cares if she lives or dies, but here she is, nonetheless, training hard and perfecting her skills, which gives the lie to the line we just read. Joelle can travel out of her body, so she's hardly a prisoner in the traditional sense. From whence her resentment and her passionate desire to escape, then, is a mystery.
This novel employs trope and cliché to an astounding degree. There's a place which Joelle is forbidden to approach "on pain of death"! Oh my! The bad guy isn’t the Red Wizard, but the "Crimson Mage" because 'Red Wizard' ain't nowhere near as kewl as 'Crimson Mage', and don't you dare ever forget it on pain of death! I was surprised he wasn't named 'The Scarlet Sorcerer"! After a while, this novel started to seem far more of a parody then ever it was an actual fantasy tale.
I made it 20% into this before I gave up. This is not for me. If you're really addicted to this genre you might find this entertaining, but I need more: more inventive, more original, a more daring way of telling the same story. This was standard stuff with nothing to keep my interest alive when there are so many other novels awaiting which promise more.
