|
-
Hivemind social net
-
News
- Features
- Blogs
- Events
Calendar
- Editorials
- Monthly
Zine
- Offworld
Report
- Our Daily
RSS Feed
- Google Toolbar scifi
- Movie/TV
Reviews
> Recent movies
> Movies by year
> Movies by title
- Book
Reviews
> Recent books
> Books by year
> Books by title
- Home
- Worlds
- Biography
- Bibliography
- Appearances
- Reviews
- Blog
- Community
- Press
- Links
Become
an Advertiser
- Web
Site Directory
- Search
the Net
- StephenHunt.net
- WoodenRocket.com
- Check
your E-mail
- Non Sci-Fi
News
|
A Secret Atlas (book 1 of The Age Of Discovery) by Michael A. Stackpole
01/04/2005 . Source: Andy Stout 
pub: Bantam Spectra. 460 page enlarged paperback. Price: $15.00 (US), $21.00 (CAN). ISBN: 0-553-38237-3. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.bantamdell.com and www.stormwolf.com
Stackpole's something of a veteran author these days, with around 30 books, not to mention numerous games and game guides under his belt. So it's not really surprising that with 'A Secret Atlas' he's tried to do something a bit different with the fantasy genre. Does he carry it off? Well, judging by this, the first book in what will develop into 'The Age Of Discovery' trilogy, the answer's a yes, but only a qualified one.
Where 'A Secret Atlas' tries to innovate is hanging everything on exploration. Not questing, not jaunting off to some mountain or other to find the magic thingy to defeat the evil whatsist, but in good, honest to goodness exploration. In a world where skills and talents have their roots in magic, the Anturasi family have something of a genius for cartography. Their maps are simply more accurate than anyone else's and have helped make the principality of Nalenyr wealthy. Nalenyr, however, is only one of nine principalities. The remnants of a mighty empire that was destroyed in an ancient cataclysm and the power balance between the nine is shifting as the struggle for finite resources intensifies.
What's needed is more income. So at the behest of Prince Cyron, Qiro Anturasi, autocratic patriarch of the family, sends his two grandsons out to explore. One heads off to sea to search for a lost continent. The other heads into the wild lands where magic still roams to try and find an old spice route. The book is therefore quite naturally split between their various adventures. On the one hand, plots and machinations back in Nalenyr and events in the competing principality to the north, Deserion, on the other.
It's all a fairly rich and agreeable stew. The difficulty is that in places it promises to be something a bit more cordon bleu than that. At one point early on, the Anturasis get awfully excited about chronometers that maintain reliable time, thus helping them solve the problems with longitude. The science though all gets lost fairly quickly, as does the economics and some of the more sociological musings on the effects of discovering brand new continents. The explorations also feature several Odyssey-like episodes of chance events, which are fairly nice little set pieces but don't seem to have much to do with the greater scheme of things. Maybe all will be revealed later, but for the moment they leave the reader starting to wander round aimlessly without a map very much in the same way the characters are. While we're dwelling on the negatives, some of the history has a feel of being bolted together in a bit of an Ikea manner: insert cataclysm A into empire B, not forgetting useful loophole for the author C.
When Stackpole fleshes out his characters, he does it well and there are enough hints, clues, depth charges and bombs on slow-burning fuses placed in the story that you know the second volume is definitely not going to be short on entertainment. Hopefully, it won't be short on intelligence either and some of the more intriguing avenues that get briefly investigated in 'A Secret Atlas' will get fully explored as the series winds on.
Andy Stout
|
|
