I was in a bookstore and on the $5 table was the first book in the series called
The Legends of Karac Tor.
The Book of Names. The description on the back intrigued me. Five dollars, hey it could be good. Good is an understatement, it sucked me in. It left me hanging and I did not even know it was a series! I guess i did not read the back very well. So, come to find out it was written a while back, but the stores don't carry the rest of the series. Who could just leave it there? I had to know the rest of the story. So, to Amazon I went. The next two were on Kindle so I read them fast, the fourth book came out mid February. I had to wait for it to go on Kindle. All were around the $5 price for Kindle version. Great buy. Now that I have finished the fourth book, I have to wait until Mr. Briggs finishes that fifth book. Grand finale. I can't wait.
The series consists of :
The Book of Names
Corus the Champion
The Song of Unmaking
The Raveged Rhelm
The War of Swords- coming
You can find them on
Amazon
You can learn more about the author and the series at
Hidden Lands website
General overview:
The basic gist of the story is that things are not as they may seem. Maybe, this world, what we see is not all there is. Maybe, just maybe the histories of our world are interrelated more than we care to admit. Perhaps there are other worlds, what if they intersected, what if they interrelated. What if?
The Barlow family has recently lost mother/wife. They have also moved. Chasing a dream of their archaeologist father.
What happens next is nothing any of them expected, not even the dad, who has been researching this a long time. The boys one by one stumble into another world, become and intricate part of it. Dad follows. Their lives are changed, by hardship, grief, joy and promise. It is a clear and beautiful picture of what happens when we acknowledge God as the master story teller, the author of our unique stories, so distinct and so intertwined. He reveals, he heals, he makes all things new. This is a great story about our journey, our story, the hand of God. I also really like the example of gifts. God gives gifts to his children and the Barlow's and Odessa's clan have gifts too. I like that.
Ok, now the story line overview:
Reggie Barlow has recently lost his wife. He has four boys. All are in varying stages of grief. They move to a small town to a farm. While clearing a field of thorns a mystery unfolds. I won't spoil it for you.... but one by one the boys find themselves in another world, then dad too. This takes two books. The boys find that in the transition they each acquire a new gift that is very useful in the many quests and adventures they find themselves in. They make some really great new friends and find a new home and purpose in the land of Karac Tor. The boys and dad are intricate parts of the end time saga of this world or other dimension.
In the first book,
The Book of Names, Hayden and Ewan must help to defeat an evil enchantress who desires to cast the world of Karac Tor into darkness and evil. Does she work alone or is there another behind her evil work? Will the boys accept the call or will they go home? Can they?
In the second book,
Corus the Champion, the twins, Garret and Gabe have made it to the Hidden Lands. All four boys have a part to play. The enchantress is at work again and someone worse is rising up. A long lost champion must be retrieved from the clutches of evil before it is too late and a long sleeping King of another world must be awakened to stop the spread of evil and destruction. Will the boys rise to the challenge, even if it cost them greatly? Will they find a way to their father?
In the third book,
The Song of Unmaking, dad finally makes his way through the portal and into Karac Tor, grief torn over his wife and the seeming loss of his four sons, he takes an entire book to find the strength to stand and be part of the story. Meanwhile his sons are off and running, adventure at every turn. A dark evil threatens Karac Tor. A machine, an army of unliving beasts. Will they find the strength in faith to do what they have been called to do?
In the fourth book,
The Ravaged Rhelm, two plots unfold and intertwine in book one and book two of this novel. The song has unleashed a fury of destruction and change for those given to evil and those given to good. The rest must decide who leads them, will the king from another world hold them together? Will the humans turned monster destroy the people? Will the Barlow brothers even survive this? Lost and wandering each finds their own mission and works hard to follow the call. What of their father? He just disappeared along with one of the rulers and three of her children. The second half of the book follows them in their journey, a call to find the last voice of prophecy required for the end times of Karac Tor. This can't be the end for Reggie though as he finds he is falling in love again. The book ends with some solidarity and and answer, much of the riddle the books are based on is solved. We await the end in book four,
The War of Swords.
Critique:
Good: This series is a great read. Captivating and engaging. The author uses great words to challenge the vocabulary of the reader. I like that. He uses just enough description to lead us into our own imagination. Each book ends at such a place that there is sufficient closure but leaves you hanging so you just must read the next book. The characters are developed in such a keen and personal way that you really feel that you know them. I found myself laughing out loud, crying and clutching the book in stressful anticipation. I also really liked the historical and mythological aspects that Briggs brought to the book, makes one think about things a little deeper. I liked the mirroring of different cultures and language use (some of that needed some translation), it is refreshing to have a cast of characters who are multi cultural. I also really appreciated the spiritual aspect of the book, showing us the story line God has for us is not always, well, rarely is, what we think it is. The artwork on the covers of these books are quality, eye catching works of art showing care and consideration for the story.
Not as good: Well, the only negative comments I have for this series is in regard to flow and editing. While the author really does the story, the editor helps to put things in an order that makes sense and I think either the editor was off or I got an unedited copy. The third book does not flow as well as the first two, leaving you hanging for more than one or two chapters with some of the characters as they go back and forth between what is happening in different parts of the story for longer chunks of time. Not too bad really, you still get a well rounded idea of what all the characters are up to and how they are feeling. The fourth book has a few more issues. I am guessing that something happened in the upload of the kindle version from the publisher and a previous edition was put out instead of the final edit. There were multiple editing errors in spelling and phrasing and actually once a totally different name was used for one of the twins. This did not bother me, but it could be a distraction for others, land is unprofessional. I am pretty sure this was an error on the part of the publisher and will be fixed soon. I just don't have that new official copy. The other issue with the book, it is an editing issue as well, is that it started out going back and forth between two parties (three of the brothers) then went and focused on one of them entirely for many chapters. In the first part of the book there was little mention of dad, who had suddenly disappeared at the end of the third book. Also Hayden was only mentioned in the first and last chapters and we have only an inkling of an idea what he has been up to, he was our main character in the first book and it seemed unfair to readers to leave us hanging with out so much as a minor chapter in between to let us know what he was up to. Ewan also seemed a secondary character and he was just re-developing his skill and I would have liked to see more of his personal struggle with this. We did get to know Gabe and Garret more in the first part of this book, especially Gabe. The second part of the book (and they are broken into book one and book two), we follow dad, Reggie, and Odessa, a ruler on Karac Tor, and three of her kids as they traverse worlds looking for the prophet to bring commencement to the end times on Karac Tor. While this was interesting it felt disjointed. It also brought a budding romance to the scene with characters we had not previously gotten to know and love, so it seemed awkward, though by the end I was certainly rooting for them and glad for the outcome. Looking forward to more closure to that in the last book. Considering that this book is for teens, the adult thought process of love and commitment, grief and hope are a bit out of context for the general audience. Not a problem for adult readers who will understand. Given that this is semi autobiographical in that the characters and relationships reflect real ones it is understandable, but not really what a teen audience is interested in. Now, if say, Hayden or Ewan had fallen for Odessa's daughter, now that is a good teen story, and would also have been unrelated to the real life characters. I prefer the back and forth of the first two stories and even the third. The second really felt like the two separate books it was broken up into, which does not fit the style of the first three books of a series. Usually a series sticks with the same format. I wanted to know more about the other characters and what they were doing and how they were developing in their new calling and life on this other world. I missed them in the second half, and somewhat in the first. Despite the critique here I still really enjoyed the book, I just thought the editing could have been better in how the story was put together in chapters, alternating rather than grouping. These issues did not take away from the message or quality storyline of the book, and that is a good thing since it is such a fabulous story.
I think that D Barkley Briggs is a very fine and noteworthy author who deserves a better editor or maybe a publisher who checks which edition they put out there for sale.
Reader level: I would put this book at a Junior High/High School reading level. It uses big words which is great. It is a complicated plot line and it uses some logic and historical connections that are at a more advanced reading level.
Reader appropriateness: I would give this a PG rating for kids under JH because of the violence of battle and Reggie grappling with grief and love.
Alerts: I have no cautions for parents in this VERY clean book. No bad language, sexuality or convoluted witchcraft that could be confusing. The violence is aptly described for war scenes and is not over the top, but would not be appropriate for kids under 5th grade.
While this book has a good story line for both boys and girls it would be quite well received and related to by boys in particular.
All in all, I loved this book series and can't wait for the final book to come out later this year.
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