NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS
Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books
Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258
Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com
October 22, 2012
More Adventures, New Characters and Plot Twists in Latest Bell Mountain Book
A review of
Lee Duigon The Last Banquet (Storehouse Press, 2012)
$18.00 338 pp ISBN-13: 978-1-891375-58-3 ISBN-10: 1-891375-58-X
Reviewed by: Forrest Schultz
Jack and Ellayne, who have been with us from the beginning of the Bell Mountain Series, are back again in the latest book (the fourth one), The Last Banquet, which will be followed by two more, The Fugitive Prince and The Palace, according to the publisher, Storehouse Press, whose website is www.chalcedon.edu/store. The other main characters in the previous three books are back and a new one is added, a very delightful and exciting sixteen year old girl, Gurun, who hails from a remote (and hitherto unknown) region of the interesting fantasy land in which these tales take place. Everyone is so in awe of her that she is hailed as a Queen, and it is humorous to note how the Obann boy king Ryons finally reacts to this. There is also an interesting revelation in re the main wicked character, The Thunder King, which is reminiscent of the unveiling of the Wizard of Oz. But, overall, Duigon's fantasy is radically different from Oz because of the great seriousness in the story: eternal matters are at stake and wickedness is no joke. Actually, it is not easy to keep up even with the temporal matters in the story because of the abundance of characters and plot twists. Although this may seem surprising in a book for juvenile readers, the author and the Chalcedon Foundation people support the kind of education which prevailed in the West prior to the twentieth century in which children were expected to accomplish more more than they are in what passes for education in today's typical schools.
The ending of the book is rather strange because at first we are not sure if this is also the ending of the series or not. Surprisingly there is NO indication in the rear of the book of the future books in the series -- I had to go to the publisher's website to find this out!! In a way it seemed like the end but then I had second thoughts -- there does not appear to be a real resolution yet, in the deepest sense. The author very briefly talks of the next two books in his October 9 post on his blog http://leeduigon.com/author.leeduigon, which, by the way, is fun to read.
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