Author: Greg Keyes
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Rating: WORTHY!
I reviewed Footsteps in the Sky back in February and I didn't like that one either, so I guess this author isn't for me. This is book one of a series, so while I confess I am not a fan of series, at least I came into this one at volume one (clearly marked on the cover, I'm happy to report! I appreciated that!). I feel rather cynical about the purpose and existence of novel series, since they tend not to be so novel after all. Once in a while you can find one which is truly well done, original, and addictive, but these are rare. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal that the next one I experiment with will be such an exception. This wasn't.
In order to get a reader to follow you, as a writer, into a series, you have to grab them and give them everything they need to come back and I felt this one didn't give me any reason to want to keep going, much less continue through more than one volume. There are 350 pages of this, and I couldn't read beyond the first fifty because nothing happened, nor looked it was going to. It began with a prologue which I skipped as I always do. Prologues are antiquated, and if the author doesn't feel it's important enough to include it in the main body of the book, then I certainly don't feel that it's important enough to expend time on. After that it was all down hill.
The story bounces back and forth between two characters: a ten-year-old girl named Hezhi, and a seventeen-year-old boy named Perkar. Hezhi is a princess who is missing her cousin. He was taken by the priests, evidently as some sort of a sacrifice, and Hezhi is determined to find out what happened to him. Why the royalty are not informed (or if they are, they're not telling Hezhi) what's happening to children of the royal blood isn't explained in the portion I read.
Perkar is the son of the village head man. He's in love with the rather bizarre goddess of the river, and is beaten brutally to become a man, by his own father with a wooden sword. I certainly didn't appreciate that nor did I see what purpose it served. if it was to make him look tough, it felt like it was a really poor way of getting the point across.
Hezhi has a giant who serves as her bodyguard, and despite his being built muscularly, he evidently gets out of breath swimming short distances. This made no sense to me. We meet Hezhi exploring the castle catacombs, trying to find a pathway that links with the route her cousin was taken. Why she can't take that actual route isn't explained - or if it was, I missed it - so she blindly wanders the castle tunnels hoping to blunder into it. Then she gives this up for no apparent reason and demands to be taught by the castle librarian, who treats this royal princess like dirt. Again, none of this made sense and by this time, Hezhi isn't looking very smart to me.
This was all that occupied the first fifty pages - so essentially nothing happened, and it was boring as it could possibly be, There was no sense of adventure, no thrill of the chase, no hint of a road trip or a real quest. It was just boring everyday life of two kids and it wasn't remotely entertaining to me. There was nothing to draw me to either kid, or to make me even sympathize, much less empathize with them. This is why I gave up on this novel. Life is too short to spend trying to find a story, when it should be right there from page one.
