The Wild Road
Gabriel King
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
**
DESCRIPTION: Since the first creatures walked the earth, the wild roads have served as their heart. Flowing like invisible highways, these conduits of ancient and untamed magicks encircle the earth. Felines have long been the guardians of this network of otherworldly energy, protecting it from those who would corrupt or destroy it. The Majicou is the latest guardian of the wild roads, and soon he shall face a new challenge. At the next vernal equinox, the King and Queen of cats will bear the prophesied Golden Cat, a being of great powers. An ancient enemy of the wild roads, the human Alchemist, has long sought a key to harness the energies of the highways for himself. With the Golden Cat, he may succeed. At the end of his last life, the Majicou little strength beyond his domain - certainly not enough for this all-important task. A cat must be sent to find the King and Queen and safeguard them as they travel to Tintangel, the convergence of the wild roads. This task falls to Tag, who starts out as a pampered house pet. Soon, he will have to step forward and claim his heritage as guardian of the wild roads, or the entire world will suffer.
REVIEW: Having read and enjoyed Tailchaser's Song (by Tad Williams), I had high hopes for King's feline fantasy novel. Those hopes didn't last long.
Most of the characters were uninteresting, the situations convoluted and strange, and the plot simply didn't make as much sense as the author apparently felt it did.
I found myself thinking that portions of the manuscript had been cut, or maybe I was missing parts of conversations. If it was cut, the editors cut the wrong parts.
It drug in several spots, where the cats traveled across lengthily-described distances, and the author felt compelled to name every turn and street they took when in
towns. Tad Williams did a much better job creating a feline fantasy world, in part because he wisely kept the action away from humans and human habitations for most of
the book. King's writing style included many obscure human references which killed my suspension of disbelief. One second, she's comparing a cat's face to an ancient
Norman helmet, and the next she's having Tag puzzle over road machinery and other mundane city objects. One globetrotting cat even knew commercial jet planes by
manufacturer and model number, and all were impossibly familiar with human names for feline breeds. Was King writing from a feline viewpoint, or as a human telling
the tale? I wished she'd made up her mind. The Alchemist was the sort of omnipotent yet impotent bad guy whose minions showed up whenever the plot needed them, inflicting
no more damage than necessary before vanishing just as quickly - and inexplicably - as they arrived. The entire ending sequence seemed like it was designed for the author
to show off with; too many flashes and magical tricks for its own good. If it had been a movie, I would've accused King of going overboard on the unnecessary FX just for
the sake of having a spectacular finale sequence to hype in the commercials.
Ultimately, I just plain didn't feel this story come to life as a good story ought to. I liked a few stray parts of it, and a few supporting characters were intriguing.
The Wild Road may be getting high praise from high sources, but not from this cat-lover, sadly. (The series continues through at least one more book, but I have no
intention of following it further.)
You might also enjoy:
Eyewitness Handbooks: Cats (David Alderton, Fiction - A guide to cats of the world)
Lionboy (Zizou Corder, YA Fiction - A boy who can speak Cat sets out to find his abducted parents)
Dragoncharm (Graham Edwards, Fiction - Before the rise of Man, two dragons begin a quest to save their kind)
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (T. S. Eliot, Poetry - The poems that inspired the musical Cats)
Cats in Space (Brian Fawcett, editor, Fiction - Sci-fi stories about cats)
Warriors: Into the Wild (Erin Hunter, YA Fiction - A housecat leaves his safe human home to live with the local ferals)
Redwall (Brian Jacques, YA? Fiction - The animals of Redwall Abbey face an army of evil rats)
Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria (Rahma Krambo, YA Fiction - A housecat must help defend a powerful book from evil forces)
The Call of the Wild and White Fang (Jack London, Fiction - In two stories, a dog abducted to the Alaskan Gold Rush learns the savage ways of the wolf, and a wolf with a half-Husky mother learns the civilized ways of Man)
Catfantastic I - IV (Andre Norton and Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Fiction - Sci-fi and fantasy tales of cats)
felidae (Akif Pirinçci, Fiction - A tom discovers a murdered cat in the yard of his new home)
A Catland Companion (John Silvester &smp; Anne Mobbs, Art - A look at "Catland," the turn-of-the-century world of anthropomorphic cats popularized by Louis Wain)
The King of Cats and Other Feline Fairy Tales (John Richard Stephens, Nonfiction - A collection of feline fairy tales)
Three Bags Full (Leonie Swann, Fiction - A flock of Irish sheep investigate the suspicious death of their shepherd)
Tailchaser's Song (Tad Williams, Fiction - A cat's search for his missing friend leads him to an ancient and terrible danger)
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The Gunslinger
(The Dark Tower series, Book 1)
Stephen King
Signet Books
Fiction, Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: At one time, the gunslingers were the knights of their world, executors of justice and upholders of civilized law, but times changed and the world moved on, leaving law and civilization dying in the dust. Among the scattered, shrinking townships, talk of the Devil and Armageddon is heavy in the air, and from the looks of things the End of Days can’t be far off. Roland, the last gunslinger in this dying land, crosses desert and mountain in pursuit of the “man in black,” a sorcerer capable of great miracles and great deceptions. Through him, he hopes to learn the way to the Tower, a place beyond space and time where God himself may be found looking upon His many universes, and perhaps the only place from which Roland’s world – or all worlds - may be saved.
REVIEW: If Stephen King hadn’t already proven himself a profitable commodity, I doubt this book ever would’ve seen the light of day in its current form. It is, admittedly, just the start of a longer saga, a saga that was unfinished at the time this book was published, and that’s the main problem: it feels like the first few chapters of another book, roughly lopped off, padded out, and stuck into a dust jacket. The gunslinger and his world were so obviously part of a much bigger story that I never connected with them in any meaningful way. I also never have been able to tolerate Meaning of the Universe stories (stories in which the author attempts to break down the very nature of reality and pass it off as fiction), and the final part of the book was one long dissertation on the Meaning of the Universe as it sets the gunslinger up for the quest to find the Tower and possibly save his world. I found it at Half Price Books, and that’s the only way I’d even consider pursuing the series. It may be unfair of me to judge it harshly, knowing that there is a series attached to it, but it was packaged and presented as a single book, and thus as a single book I must rate it. As it is, I can’t say I feel compelled to follow the gunslinger much further on his surreally grandiose quest to the middle of nowhere.
You might also enjoy:
The Dark is Rising sequence (Susan Cooper, YA Fiction - Children find themselves involved in the epic, eternal struggle between Good and Evil)
The Stoneheart trilogy (Charlie Fletcher, YA Fiction - An angry boy's act of vandalism plunges him into the heart of the endless, unseen battle between London's gargoyles and statues)
The High House (James Stoddard, Fiction - The forces of Chaos threaten a vast house that encompasses the whole of God's creation)
The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Michael Swanwick, Fiction - Abducted by fairies as a child, a slave girl in an iron war dragon factory plots escape and vengeance)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (J. R. R. Tolkien, Fiction - A small band sets out to avert a great and terrible evil from destroying the world)
The Otherland quartet (Tad Williams, Fiction - A powerful consortium lurks behind tomorrow's superpowered internet)
Forever After (Roger Zelazny, creator, Fiction - After the evil army is defeated, the forces of good must scatter magical artifacts to prevent chaos from overwhelming the land)
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