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UK Authors - Sci-fi & fantasy |
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The Empire Stone |
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 The Empire Stone byChris Bunch Little, Brown (Orbit) 359 pages, 2000 ISBN 1857239652 Reviewed by our UK Editor Rachel A. Hyde Peirol is a dwarf with a mission. The mission is to find the mythical Empire Stone which nobody has seen for hundreds of years. It is supposedly housed in a city with an unknown location, and is thought by many to be just a bard’s tale. But Peirol is working for a powerful wizard who doesn’t understand the word "no" and who has a beautiful granddaughter into the bargain. So Peirol sets off and has a lot of hairy adventures involving slaves, witches, wizards, demons and strange priests. Along the way he gets a chance to do some rowing (rather a lot of this) and plenty of hand-to-hand combat. He also gets to try out his military skills, ply his trade as a jeweller and make love to a lot of women, most of whom seem to believe that being a dwarf is lucky and are anxious to try him out. This is a truly enjoyable story that harks back to the days when the definition of a fantasy wasn’t a trilogy made up of wordy doorstops. It reminded me of Conan or even the great ERB in the sheer volume of adventures and variety of events that crowded into not very many pages of largish type. I read and enjoyed Bunch’s Seer King trilogy but found that when he wasn’t writing about military matters or sex, the story flagged somewhat. In this new book, the author hasn’t given the reader a chance to get overused to any situation before racing on to the next. This technique works very well with fantasy, and with any other genre that involves more action than angst. There may be more books planned in this series, with tales of other adventures rather than a continuation of the same story. I look forward to reading them if this is the case. |
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