Dream of Legends - Stephen Zimmer

Last month I read Crown of Vengeance, the first novel in Stephen Zimmer's epic fantasy series The Fires of Eden. Publisher Seventh Star Press was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the second volume, Dream of Legends as well. I wasn't sure how many parts there would be in this series when I wrote the review of the first book but the publisher has informed me in the mean time that there will be seven Fires of Eden books. I felt that the first volume did have a certain appeal to fans of the epic fantasy sub genre but that the execution left something to be desired. Dream of Legends better in some ways but much worse in others. Ultimately, I felt it was a seven hundred page book with only two hundred pages worth of story in it.

Dream of Legends picks up right the story where Crown of Vengeance ends. In the Five Realms the Unifier has struck a first blow against the tribes. It quickly becomes apparent that the tribes cannot hope to hold their territory against the Unifier's onslaught. The terrain is suited to the stubborn defence the tribes put up but the number of enemy soldiers is just overwhelming. They need held and hope to find it with the Midragardians. An enemy of the Unifier as of yet out of reach of his armies. In the mean time, Saxany is about the be involved in a battle that will decide the fate of the nation. The Unifier's armies are approaching the Saxans' chosen field of battle. Their strength is overwhelming but the Saxans are not going to give up without a fight. One of the largest armies ever fielded by the Saxans awaits them, prepared to defend their homeland until the last man falls. Despite he Saxan courage, their situation looks hopeless. Like the Five Realms, the Saxans will need aid to survive the coming storm.

One of the things I disliked about Crown of Vengeance is that the Saxan story line lacked a proper climax. Zimmer builds up to a big battle that doesn't materialize at the end of the book. It does in the sequel though. In fact, a large part of the second half of the novel is dedicated to it. The fact that the battle isn't joined until the second part of the novel illustrates the major weakness of this novel. Zimmer just takes too long to get to the point. The author shows us several Saxan characters getting ready for battle, thinking how they'd rather be at home drinking good ale and how many of them are likely never to go home again. Not unusual thought on the eve of a battle but even if Zimmer hadn't expressed this sentiment in the first book already, we don't need to be told several times and certainly not in the verbose style Zimmer employs.

Another issue with Crown of Vengeance was that is introduced so many point of view characters that most of them didn't get enough time to develop. In Dream of Legends a few new characters are introduced but on the whole it is much more focussed on a smaller number of characters, enabling Zimmer to add some depth to them. Interesting about his choice of point of view is that most of the characters transported from our world to Ave, receive little or no attention. It's the natives that steal the show in this volume, which again makes me wonder if we really needed nine characters carried over from our world to tell this story.

One of the few characters from our world who does get some time in the spotlight is Lee. He's developing into something of a champion for the libertarian ideal. There's a fine rant in one of his sections where he details how the state is taxing his marginally profitable Chinese restaurant too much to spend it frivolously. It's the main reason why he gets along with the rather moody forest dweller Gunther. A man who is the ideal of self-reliance, a man who just wants to be left alone (but unfortunately the world won't let him be). Both books include quotes of Ayn Rand so this isn't entirely surprising. I'm not a great fan of this line of reasoning, it's one of the reasons I can't stand Terry Goodkind's novels. Fortunately Zimmer knows better than to bludgeon his readers with it.

While Zimmer improves in some areas, most notably the tighter focus on a more limited group of characters, the novel suffers enormously from overly detailed descriptions and long and repetitive interior monologues. It simply stifles the progress of the plot to the point where large sections of the book stall completely. I'm used to reading big books and consider myself a fairly patient reader (I rarely put a book down once I start reading it) but the temptation to skim sections of this novel rather than fully read them, was just overwhelming. If anything, this novel shows that epic fantasy is about more than getting a big word count. After reading the first two books in this series I'm afraid the only possible conclusion is that this series is not for me.

Book Details
Title: Dream of Legends
Author: Stephen Zimmer
Publisher: Seventh Star Press
Pages: 723
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-983-10862-7
First published: 2010

Thrall - Steven Shrewsbury

Thrall by Steven Shrewsbury is the second book in a package containing three volumes I received a while back from Seventh Star Press. I know absolutely nothing about the author other than the little bit mentioned in the short biography in the back of this book. The novel has a striking cover, the inspiration for which didn't become clear to me until the last few chapters. It's an interesting choice, fitting for the nature of the story for sure. Behind this cover is a novel that may appeal to some, but too rough and unpolished for my taste. To be honest, the novel felt like it was written in a hurry.

Gorias La Gaul is looking for deliverance. For seven centuries he has walked the earth and battled all manner of monstrosities. Now, the years are catching up to him and the old man is weary of the world he no longer feels is worth living in. History is not quite finished with the living legend however. On a visit to the city of Khabnur to see his grandson, La Gaul is caught up in a war involving several parties. All of them are aware of his presence and each of them has their reasons to either try to enlist him or remove him from the field of battle. La Gaul is not interested in their causes but some of the things he sees around him cannot be ignored.

At some 260 pages, Thrall is a rather concise novel for all the things it tries to accomplish. Not only does the main character have a history of seven centuries, some of which is very relevant to the story, Shrewsbury also throws him in a three-sided war, La Gaul's offspring (the mothers are curiously absent though) and a whole host of strange sentient creatures. It's quite a lot for the reader to take in. The biggest problem this novel has, is conveying all this information to the reader. We see most of the story though La Gaul's eyes and he is not a man to voluntarily share his history, experience or knowledge. By the end of the book I had a fairly good idea where the author was going and what drove La Gaul to his actions but the motives of some of the other major players remain unknown. The most glaring of these omissions is the question why a barbarian chieftain would drag his people thousands of miles away from their home turf.

A little more attention to the worldbuilding would have made it a much more interesting novel. From what little we do get to see, Shrewsbury set the book in a time when men lived centuries, God and his angels regularly interfered in mortal affairs. It's a world in decline, spiralling into violence and, if some of the characters are to be believed, in thorough need of being washed clean of its sins. The Old Testament was clearly in inspiration to the author, although he has borrowed from other sources as well. The author indicates that a sequel is a possibility so perhaps we get to see a little more of this world and find out some more about the deeds that made La Gaul a legend.

I wasn't all that impressed with the prose either. Shrewsbury has a flair for witty dialogue but some of the descriptive passages were jarring. A random example for chapter IV:

The foursome rode hard for the rest of the night and the better part of the day. The structured skyline and marble domes of Khabnur were behind them fast. Outside the city limits, countryside rolled in gentle slopes. Empty fields awaited the serfs, for most of the land ran too rugged to plant. In the distance the hills humped into larger mountains, but that would not be an obstacle for them. They rode toward a series of scant forests, away from the heavy savannahs of the south-lands .

Not a terribly well written passage, it raises a number of questions. The better part of the following day? The marbled domes of Khabnur were behind them? Is to be the verb we're looking for here? Why are there fields in the first place, if the land is too rugged to plant? Hills humping into mountains, there's got to be a more elegant expressing for this. Heavy is not a word I'd associate with savannahs. There are more passages like this, that really shouldn't have survived the editor's attention.

Ultimately, Thrall is a book that had potential but suffers enormously from a flawed execution. With a little more attention to the worldbuilding and some more polish applied to the writing it could have been a much better novel. As it is, the novel feels like a rough draft, a work that needs to be fleshed out in places. Plenty to work on if the author does indeed decide to write a sequel. Plenty of the world left to uncover as well. It would be a shame to let all that potential remain undeveloped.

Book Details
Title: Thrall
Author: Steven Shrewsbury
Publisher: Seventh Star Press
Pages: 263
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-983-10863-4
First published: 2010

Crown of Vengeance - Stephen Zimmer

A couple of weeks ago I received a package form Seventh Star Press containing the first two books in the epic fantasy series The Fires in Eden by Stephen Zimmer. The author appears to be quite productive, publishing four rather large novels in the past three years. Zimmer alternates between writing this series and the Rising Dawn Saga, which is more of an urban fantasy. The book came in trade paperback format, including a number of very nice interior illustrations by Mathew Perry. The publisher clearly went for a high quality edition. Zimmer is aiming to write a classic epic fantasy. Although the scope and setting of the novel certainly lives up to that, I do feel the execution is not all it could be. This series is off to a rocky start.

The author introduces us to a group of characters from contemporary Lexington, Kentucky. Each of them is, in their own way, dissatisfied with their life and the world they're living in. One night all of them encounter a mysterious, unnatural fog, that obscures the world around them from their view completely. When the fog lifts, they find themselves in a in a place none of them recognizes. Slowly the truth sinks in. They have left their own world and entered a strange realm where technology has not progressed as far, strange and dangerous creatures roam the land and magic is still very much believed in. It is also a world on the brink of a massive war. A leader known as the Unifier is attempting to unite all peoples under his rule. In this part of the world, only three nations still resist and the Unifier means to deal with them soon. The role of the new arrivals in this conflict remains unclear, but a wizard known as the Wanderer is clearly steering them to a destiny they can only guess at.

The book does not indicate how many parts there will be in this series but, judging form the scope of this first volume, I would not be surprised if Zimmer means to take it beyond a trilogy. He creates a vast world, of which we only scratch the surface in this volume. As the first novel in the series, Crown of Vengeance is supposed to draw the reader in, create the kind of commitment to stay on board for part two and three. As a result, first novels in a series are often more self-contained than the sequels, aiming to be satisfactory read on their own, rather than in the context of a whole series. I think Zimmer hits a snag here. You may have notices I haven't mentioned any characters by name in the synopsis. This is because there are an awful lot of them with a point of view. Zimmer transports eleven people to his new world, eight of whom are point of view characters. On top of that, the book also contains nine point of view characters native to the world. Although some characters get more time in the spotlight than others, it goes at the expense of the depth of most of them, and to a point, also slows down to plot.

Especially early on in the novel, the author is busy transporting everybody to the fantasy setting. They cross over in five separate groups, resulting is a number of descriptions of people who are vaguely dissatisfied with life and their encounter with the mysterious fog. It is not an event that needed to be repeated that many times I think. Zimmer also spends quite a bit of time on their troubles of surviving in this new world without resources and gathering his heroes up in the more manageable number of two groups. These two groups and two focal points for the conflict he will follow for the rest of the novel. By the time these groups have made contact with the natives we're past the halfway point of the novel and only then can we start to properly explore this world.

The Unifier has three enemies left he means to deal with. Zimmer saves one of these groups for a later book and focusses on the two the Unifier means to deal with first. One of these groups, the Five Realms appear to be inspired by the Iroquois league, a loose confederation of people in the north-east of what is now the US and the bordering region of Canada. It's an interesting, somewhat a-typical choice in a novel that uses a lot of common epic fantasy ingredients. Perhaps he found his inspiration locally as the Iroquois do have a presence in his home state of Kentucky. I found his descriptions of the Five Realms culture very interesting. I wonder if they will end up accepting a sixth people over the course of the series.

The second culture Zimmer describes, the Kingdom of Saxany is based on medieval Anglo-Saxon society. He seems to have done quite a bit of research on the military structure of England during that period. I must admit this part of the story frustrated me a bit. It promises a classic big battle at the end, but while the Five Realms do get to experience the opening moves in the conflict, Zimmer holds back here. Saving the seemingly inevitable pitched battle for the next book, he ends Crown of Vengeance at what doesn't strike me as a natural break in the story. It could have made for a good cliffhanger ending but even that is not provided. This part of the story just stops.

There is a risk involved in walking down the well-trodden paths of epic fantasy. On the one hand it provides an author with a number of elements that obviously appeals to many readers. On the other hand, there is the risk of writing a cliché story. Challenging the staples of epic fantasy has given us two of the most exciting bit series in epic fantasy. The Malazan Book of the Fallen, in which Steven Erikson challenges just about every epic fantasy cliché, and A Song of Ice and Fire, in which George R.R. Martin carefully avoids quests and black and white characterization. Zimmer tries to give his own twist to a classic epic fantasy tale and ends up with an unevenly paced and essentially unfinished first novel, full of characters insufficiently developed for me to really care about them. In short, I don't think Crown of Vengeance provides a solid foundation for a multi-volume fantasy series. I hope the author manages to solidify the story a bit in the second volume Dream of Legends. If not, this series is in big trouble.

Book Details
Title: Crown of Vengeance
Author: Stephen Zimmer
Publisher: Seventh Star Press
Pages: 597
Year: 2009
Language: English
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-982-56561-2
First published: 2009