Conor and The Crossworlds Book One: Breaking The Barrier
Kevin Gerard
Review by Mary Aycock
The author, Kevin Gerard lives in San Diego,
CA, with his wife and four sons. A
native Californian and a dedicated professor of sociology and
statistics for California State University, San Marcos, Kevin spends as
much time as possible writing for publication. The Crossworlds series
provided the main impetus for his decision to pursue a professional
writing career.
Our main character, Conor Jameson, an innocent and unsuspecting boy of 10, loses his favourite Uncle from a heart attack and is trying to deal with the loss and confusion this brings to his young life. The night of the funeral, wrapped in grief, he dozes, thinking of “a special place” his Uncle mentioned. He awakes to find that he has somehow summoned Purugama the winged cougar, defender of the Crossworlds to his side.
At
first, Conor has misgivings about this giant Cougar that is almost as
large as an elephant. He realizes
that it could easily have him for breakfast, but the Cougar puts him at
ease by showing him that he is actually an intellectual being that
means him no harm.
In
an effort to help Conor work his way though his deep grief and to
eventual understanding of his Uncle’s untimely death, Purugama asks
Conor to come along on an adventure with him.
We
have ringside seats as Conor travels from adventure to adventure with
Purugama, as he travels through situations, decisions and emotions
which parallel events in Conor’s Uncle Jake’s life.
Purugama
first takes Conor soaring through deep desert canyons and we catch a
glimpse of what it would feel like to soar like an eagle and we are
eventually led to a village high up on a cliff.
Thus comes Conor’s first lesson of a similar crossroads in his
Uncle’s life. We learn that
sometimes fear paralyzes us and keeps us from helping a friend in a
time of great need. We
also learn that after your friend has forgiven you, it is equally
important for you to forgive yourself and to give up the fear and
self-loathing that sometimes comes with extreme feelings of failure.
It
must be said here, in the story, we jump back and forth, from Conor’s
recollections of his adventures with Purugama, to an ongoing battle,
high on a Mesa, between between this Great Winged Cougar, Defender of
the Crossworlds and a horrid creature named Drazian, half human and
half lizard, who is both big and ugly. Did
I mention mean and nasty, too? Drazian
is an old foe of Purugama, who has mysteriously escaped his captivity
in the Crossworlds and is determined to battle his old Cougar foe to
the death, with Conor becoming the prize for the victor!
As
the battle rages, we are carried back in Conor’s memory to the second
stop in the series of adventures, a dim, dark and odorous room in a
nondescript city. Purugama has
magically aged
Conor to a twenty-something age and tossed him into a filthy, smelly
room filled with men and women of this same age.
At first, Conor is disgusted by what he sees and smells and by
the lack of ambition on the part of the other young people. He
is passed a cigarette and expected to take a puff and pass it on, but
he lets the cigarette (and several of it’s brother and sister
cigarettes) make several rounds of the room without so much as taking a
single puff. He also notices that
they are inhaling what he takes to be “salt” that they have lined up in
neat little rows. Eventually
a “contact high” seems to overcome Conor, as he notices how happy
everyone is and how he begins to feel a deep kinship with them. He is
considering taking a deep puff the next time the cigarette or one of
it’s siblings makes the rounds, but at this point, Purugama steps in
and creates a tornado in the room, which blows all of the (shall I say
it?) drugs out of the windows. At
this point, Conor discovers that the happy crowd is no longer happy
when they find out that their reason for being together has disappeared. When
they become combatant and want to do battle with Conor, Purugama feels
that the lesson has been learned and he sweeps Conor away to safety. Again, there is the hint that this
is also an event that was somewhat paralleled by Conor’s Uncle Jake,
during his lifetime.
The
next adventure is the one that makes me HOPE that there will eventually
be a series of movies made from Conor and the Crossworlds, because I
LOVED the scenes of Purugama and adventure at the swimming pool. You will have to read the book to
find out more, because when it comes to this adventure, my lips are
sealed!
We
are bounced again and again to the battle and we continue to cheer for
Purugama, yet dread that things are not going well in that regard, so
it is with relief that we are bounced into another adventure. This particular adventure sent
echoes through my head, reminding me of something Conor told us of in
the beginning of the book. He said Uncle
Jake used to “let him sit in his lap and steer his car whenever they
drove somewhere together.” When
I read these lines in the beginning of the story, they made me smile,
thinking of how many people do this with their children, nieces,
nephews and grandchildren…but when I read this next adventure, it sent
chills down my spine, just thinking of what could have been! Again,
we and Conor got to walk through Uncle Jakes adventures, even though
the names and places might have been changed to protect the innocent,
we still get to experience them with all the warts and bad breath in
evidence!
The
next adventure takes us to a most unusual place and I can still feel
the wind blowing the hair out of my eyes as I search for MY group among
the people in the story. I know
which group I would select and we also learn which group Uncle Jake
chose. This
was one of the most cruel parts of the story, for Conor to have to lose
his Uncle once more, but with it came another lesson that must be
learned. A choice must be made and
it stuck me
how YOUNG the people in the story were when they made the choices they
had to live with for the remainder of their lives.
This series is full of wonderful life
lessons, disguised as adventures, but with deep thoughts to ponder at
the close of each one.
Which
brings us one last time to the Mesa where the Great Battle is being
fought. I
won’t tell you the ending of the story, but I will tell you that Conor
learned his lessons well and good and became the Hero we knew he would
become.
My
only complaint in Book One was that it was way too short, so it is a
good thing that it is a Series! Now
it is up to you to go find a copy of the FIRST book in a Great
Series…Conor and the Crossworlds. Remember
that name, because once you actually meet the characters, they are not
soon forgotten!