Title: Orbs of Power
Review: High fantasy is making a comeback,
what with the popularity of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series,
Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles and of course, the epic Lord of the
Rings series with The Hobbit prepared to make its big screen debut come
Christmas. It’s always been a popular genre with the die hard fans, and with
adaptions in both TV and movies, its fanbase is growing past the dedicated ones
who will read long tomes of world building magic. It’s the perfect time for a
hybrid novel that brings all the adventure of fantasy without the length for
those not patient enough to endure it, a niche Rob RodenParker attempts to fill
with his novel “Orbs of Power.”
The story has all the makings of the perfect fantasy adventure. A
spatting prince and princess from opposing kingdoms, engaged to be married for
the common good rather than love, must overcome their differences and work
together to prevent demons from destroying their world. Their tools? The titled
orbs of power, which imbue a synchost with powers based on the individual orbs,
such as ice, fire, light, etc. But only the combined strength of the orbs can
stop the four most powerful demons in command of the hoard, so Prince Alorin
and Princess Tyanna must journey to find the missing orbs before the war
against the demons is lost.
All the ingredients are there, but an engrossing story fails to
materialize. The writing can be lovely at times, such as during the fight
scenes, and painful at others, such as whenever any world-building explanation
is needed. The story just kind of stops whenever someone references something
the reader doesn’t know about and explains, breaking whatever spell might have
been cast over the reader. The novel also falls prey to supervillian monologing
with nearly every fight (and there are a lot) where the demon they’re fighting
explains his evil plan and how they will soon be destroyed. If the demons would
just shut up and concentrate on fighting instead of telling all their secrets,
they might have actually won. And the demons aren’t the only ones with bad
lines; the rest of the dialogue is filled with corny and clichéd declarations
as well as the odd modern phrase that doesn’t quite befit a royal pair, such as
“Don’t sweat it” and “frickin’.” This seems to stem from an attempt to blend
modern technology with the fantasy era with references to “background checks”
and cars as “horseless carriages,” but it seemed more forehead-wrinkling than
anything.
Another problem barring my enjoyment of the book lay within the
characters. They were rather flat in a Mary Sue kind of way, with no flaws to
bring intrigue to the story. Everyone is fantastic friends from nearly the
moment they meet, and even the battles don’t bring out a bad bone in their
bodies.
The plot is also very circular. They meet a demon, they fight, there’s an
orb, one of their friends/main characters conveniently gets the power (even
after mentioning how rare it is to find a synchost), they faint from exhaustion
from the fight, then wake up and do it again. The story needs a more
interesting conflict aside from just fighting and winning. It’s obvious what’s
going to happen in the story, and whatever barriers in the way are bluntly
knocked down instead of interestingly avoided. There were a lot of intriguing
possibilities, such as the play with the snake demon and his victims, but his
fun is put to a stop too fast to make any out of the ordinary difficulty for
our heroes.
I did think, however, that the world itself was quite well crafted, with
a number of engaging ideas explored, especially in relation to the orbs. There
are the standard fire and ice orbs, but there are also orbs of light and
gravity, the latter of which I especially enjoyed when the synchost figured out
he could create a black hole with it. The merepeople and their inability to
speak above water without gurgling pop at the end of each phrase was also a
nice touch.
So while this novel has a lot of great concepts, I really didn’t see much
development of them within the story. The ingredients are there, but the chef
needs a little more experience before this can turn into a tasty concoction.
Thanks goes to MJ Corley for this terrific review.
Publisher: Expected publication: May 11th 2012
by Red Alien Media
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 260
ISBN: Kindle Edition
Quick Review: 2 Stars out of 5.
Where Did I Read the Book:
Sent by the author
for review.
Synopsis: Join Prince Alorin and
his bride-to-be Princess Bellany on their journey to vanquish evil from the
three kingdoms of the continent of Aedaria. To do so, they need the Orbs of
Power that give their human hosts incredible powers, but they need to find them
first. During the Sealing War of years past, the orbs were created to help
defeat the demons and devils that threatened to take over the lands and conquer
all of the kingdoms. After the war the orbs were scattered throughout the
continent, and only a few remain guarded.
With an amusing cast of supporting characters and plenty of
villains to battle, Orbs of Power will take you on an exhilirating journey full
of romance, politics, and adventure. Along the way you will encounter heroes
and sorcery, devils and demons, and fantastical creatures such as centaurs and
merfolk. Follow these two unlikely young heroes as they learn to harness their
newfound powers while discovering each other on their path to becoming king and
queen together and trying to save humankind.
Author
Biography: Rob
RodenParker is an information technology professional, a part-time author and
publisher, and a full-time husband and father of two awesome kids. He loves
creating new worlds and crazy characters and hopes that you will enjoy reading
all about them!
Oh dear - I perked up at the beginning of the review with the idea of something shorter to fill the niche and then as you explained some of the problems you found with this book I relaised that they were exactly the same sort of issues I'm having with finding a good book at the moment.
ReplyDeleteNicely honest review, thank you :)