NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
REVIEWS
Reviews Of Recently Published
Science Fiction And Fantasy Books
October
18, 2013
A
Story About "The Gifted" By a Highly Gifted Author
A Review of
Laura
Burroughs The Foxes of Caminus (Burroughs Books, Inc.,
2013)
ISBN:
978-0-615-86181-4
Reviewed
by: Forrest Schultz
The publishing of books by Coweta County
authors has been booming for some time now. And the writing of some of these
books has taken a lot of work and a lot of time. A case in point is the most
recently published one -- The Foxes of Caminus -- the debut novel of
Laura Thomas, who lives near Moreland and who writes under her maiden name,
Laura Burroughs. It soon becomes clear to the reader that the writing of this
tale involved an enormous amount of research in fields as diverse as physics and
history and religion (to name a few) -- as well as a great amount of work in
world-building and character development. (And some of these characters are
"real characters"!). The Foxes in the title refers (mainly) to the teenage twins
Harlie and Anya Fox and (secondarily) to their parents [usually through
flashbacks]. Caminus is both the name of a secret island and its Academy, which
provides an unusual education, which is super-modern in some ways and
super-ancient in others. Both the Foxes and Caminus are quite interesting in
ways too numerous to discuss in a review.
This is a story about "The Gifted", i.e.
children and young people with super-special abilities. The recent sad
experience with the TV shows Heroes and Alphas and Touch
shows that it takes a specially gifted author to be able to write good stories
about The Gifted, the chief lesson being that the focus should be on the gifts
and the gifted themselves and not on attempts by criminals to kidnap them,
exploit them, etc. Burroughs has learned this lesson well. There is criminal
activity involved but the main story line is the understanding of and education
in and development of and proper use of the gifts themselves, and of the
personal relationships among the Gifted and their teachers. The lesson here is
that only a highly gifted author can write a good story about The Gifted!!
The genre of Burrough's story is partially
fantasy -- the locale is a secret island and there are mystic texts and objects
in the story -- but it is mainly science fiction: it involves super-advanced
computers and other technological devices and exotic physics (zero point fields,
nanotechnology, quantum entanglement, etc.).
This is the first book in a series. The
Kindle Edition is already out and the print book will be published soon. (For my
review I used the printed manuscript, which contains 264 pages.)
Information is available at http://www.burroughsbooks.com/, which is one of
the best written, organized, and most beautiful websites I have ever seen.
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