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
September 28, 2011
The Forming of a Champion
A review of
Lenny Fultz Maiden of Destiny, Book One of the Forgotten Gods Trilogy (Write Knight Pubs., 2011)
184 pp ISBN: 978-0-9836922-0-1
Reviewed by: Forrest W. Schultz
The Coweta writing scene recently suffered a great loss in the passing of Vickie Kennedy. Among her contributions was her Writers Block workshop in which she trained some of Coweta's best authors. One of these was Lenny Fultz, who recently had his first book published, the fantasy novel under review here.
This book, the first of a trilogy, focusses on the forming of a Champion whose title is "Maiden Of Destiny". Actually, as noted in one of the dialogues, Indigo's training program began in her childhood in the formation of her character by her parents, which is in the backstory. The story itself begins when she is fourteen when she learns of her prophesied vocation from the emissaries who take her away from her home to the Temple, where she meeets the High Priestess, passes the ordeal by the gods, and officially begins her training, which at first is mostly educational because she cannot begin the training per se until she gains possession of the Sword of Destiny, which is shown on the front cover, but which does not happen until near the end of the book.
This is a classical fantasy story but is not a copy of any previsously written fantasy, and some of the characters posssess atypical qualities. A good example of this is seen in the Captain of the ship which transports Indigo and her company across the Mystic Ocean to the land of the elves, where the Sword is hidden among a group of arcane druids. The Captain is a dwarf, who is typical in not liking elves but is atypical in hating underground mining and loving sailing the sea!
He and Indigo and most of the other characters are well developed and remarkable and they all, except for the gods, have verisimiltude. These gods are sometimes depicted as fallible and finite, like the ancienct Greek and Roman gods, and other times are regarded as infinite and omnipotent, like Jehovah. This inconsistency is the only serious criticism I have of this story. In fact if the other two books are as good as this one, we will have here what could be one of the major fantasy works of our time.
The scenes in the story are varied and the action is well-paced so as to hold the reader's attention and keep him wanting to read on. While not UNputdownable, the book is definitely notwannaputdownable!
Fultz is now at work on the second and third volumes of the trilogy. I look forward to reading them. Mainly because I want to see the characters again, which is an indication of a good writer. He has joined the Coweta Writers Group and is continuing his involvement in the Coweta writing scene.
Infomation on the writer is available on his website www.lennyfultz.com.
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