Author: JB Cantwell
Publisher: JB Cantwell
Rating: WARTY!
How can I not review a novel with part of my own name in the title? Aster Wood is a person, not a little forest. Coming from a long line of trees myself, I can appreciate that. Star Wood? Isn't that like Star Lord?! Not really! This novel is your bog-standard disadvantaged teen gets trained by man in the know, magically acquires magical powers, and goes on a quest over several volumes thereby proving how incompetent he is that he couldn't get it done in one volume.
So this novel is about young Aster, who isn't relishing spending his summer with grandma out at her remote farm. Why her mom parks him there is a bit of a mystery. We get a vague hand-wave at the fact that she's working, but this doesn't necessitate Aster being abandoned in the remote countryside - especially when that countryside has been ravaged, evidently by acid rain.
Yes this is another young adult dystopian story where Earth is on its last legs and some lowly youthful hero manages to find a magical (or perhaps a sci-fi) way to save everyone. In this case, Aster is poking around in his grandma's attic and finds a magic paper which somehow transports him to a different planet where the land is green and productive.
Curiously enough he runs right into an old guy living there who was expecting Aster's grandfather, Brendan to show up, but Brendan died long ago - before Aster was even born. From this guy, Kiron, Aster learns that there are many planets joined together with this wormhole system (or whatever it is), but Earth is a lot further away than the "triad" planets, so he's rather surprised to see Aster show up.
If this is indeed travel by wormhole, why the distance would matter is a mystery, but it was not one which engaged me or made me want to read beyond the first few chapters. There was nothing where - nothing new,nothing really original, no twists on unoriginal material and really nothing to get to grips with. I had no interest in finishing what quickly became a boring and repetitive story, let alone going on to follow this same boredom through multiple repetitive sequels.
The pretentious writing didn't help: "What are the names of these men of whom you speak" Seriously? No one speaks like that. No one ever spoke like that. I don't get this "Almarian" either. The place is called Almara, so why not Almaran? I don't get the Floridian from Florida either, but that's just a pet peeve. In another instance, I read "...looking between the stone and I expectantly" which actually should be "...looking between the stone and me expectantly". Very few people actually speak like that, either, and especially not young people, so it makes it sound weird to write that in a first person PoV novel. It ruins suspension of disbelief to constantly be reminded that you're reading a story instead of feeling completely immersed in it.
Some of the writing was just downright odd too, such as the dog named Crane running on ahead, where we read, "Crane bounded down the path up ahead." Bounding down and up ahead do not make good bedfellows. The real problem here was that this story was nothing but fantasy and I don't mean that in a complimentary manner, either. I can't recommend it.
