Publisher: lulu.com (February 10, 2012)
(ISBN-13: 978-1471063541, 292pp, $12.57)
Book Description
Publication Date: February 10, 2012
Brendan Earle is a Science Fiction Fairy Story. It is an adventure in which two people are menaced by what seems a world of magical forces. It’s about how things aren’t always what they seem, but can easily be much more real that what you think. If you read and enjoy such writers as China Mieville, Iain M Banks, William Gibson and Philip K Dick, you might find things in it that you can relate to.
Phoebe and Adam have entered The Land. It looks like a world of magic, reached through a trans-dimensional Gate. It has fire-breathing dragons, mages who work powerful spells, and dwarves. (Well, it would have to wouldn’t it? Dwarves would be a minimum, dwarves would.)
It isn’t.
They think they will be here for only one day.
They won’t.
They are involved in a very long story that will come to involve every human being on the planet.
But before they can get to that they will just have to survive dangerously powerful magic, a war between mages and fantastical creatures, and teams of vampires whose only purpose is to kill them. And that, when it’s only being done to improve sales figures, is really annoying.
My Review:
Let me start by saying that this really should be a 3-1/2 but my rating plugin will not let me do half stars.
With that said, I really enjoyed the story very much. There are many aspects of many other fantasy novels that you will find within these pages, and there really is something for everyone. I would venture to say that there is even a mild dystopian element to the story, as it occurs several years into the future, and the technology that exists during that time is nothing like what we have now.
The characters were interesting, and I was intrigued by the prospect of a virtual reality style game where you live out life as the characters and physically and emotionally experience what they do, with an intelligent AI that will adapt as you go.
I would have rated this higher, but I found it mildly distracting that I had to spend a great deal of time adjusting to the vast number of slang terms used in the book. The story, however, is enjoyable enough to make it worth it if you give it a chance. Just make sure that you have urbandictionary.com handy in case.
I may be limited in my view, having not ever left the United States, so have never experienced some of the things talked about in other countries. I did thoroughly enjoy reading about the experiences in Japan, as that is a culture that fascinates me and reading this book encouraged me to learn more!
Overall, this was still a good read, and worth the money if you enjoy fantasy novels. It is a very different novel, and I have yet to come across one similar to this.
Codicil:
Visit Bob Studholme’s blog. Click the cover for more info and to purchase a print copy. Also available on Nook and Kindle, and via Smashwords.com Thanks to the author for a review copy.
© 2012, lisapottgen. All rights reserved.
