The Sojourn Chronicles
Crystalwizard
Reviewed by Sarra Borne

Wizard's bane
Book One: Wizard's Bane
A classical style fantasy novel that draws its influences from many recognizable sources, Wizard’s Bane captures the reader’s attention and draws them into the pages.  In the opening paragraphs that are vaguely reminiscent of the start of Terminator: The Movie we meet Dale, a man from a technologically superior world who finds himself marooned in a land of magic.  Dale has a penchant for attracting a rag-tag band of followers that, not surprisingly, ultimately end up matching the character profiles found in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

This group of misfits sets out on a multi-focal quest to restore Dale’s missing powers, discover the truth about themselves, and what good fantasy novel would omit – save the world from sure destruction at the hand of otherworldly invaders.  The pacing of the story takes a backseat to character development in this book, so not much progress is made towards the fulfillment of their quest, a good thing in this case as all of the characters possess strong but likeable personalities making it difficult to choose a favorite. 

As this is book one in a series, the ending is very much a cliffhanger, since it ends rather abruptly right before they reach their first of many goals. Fortunately books two and three, Villenspell: City of Wizards (2005) and Wizards and Wanderers: Book Three of the Sojourn Chronicles (2006) are already available, and books four through six are written but not yet published according to the author’s website. 

A few minor flaws: the proof-reading isn’t perfect, leaving behind a few errors that wouldn’t be caught by a spell-checker.  The layout style is a little odd and takes a little getting accustomed to as there are an abundance of new paragraphs, the majority of which are only one sentence long.

Villenspell
Book Two: Villenspell
Villenspell: City of Wizards picks up immediately after Wizard’s Bane (2004), the first book in the series ends. It follows Dale and his misfit band of travelers who are fated to save the world on the immediate quest to remove a binding spell and works toward setting up more events that will come into play in later books. The group stops in Villenspell, a large magical city and home of the world’s wizard’s college, to get Jarl freed from his spell, restock supplies and rest. While they are there, Dale and Jarl manage to save the city from certain disaster, break up the local assassin’s guild and discover the identity of their archnemesis.

This book has moments of maturity, especially the scene where Dale is suffering over his growing attraction to Aerline who he thinks loves another, but the majority reads like a teen novel. Perhaps this is because more and more of the developing characters are teenagers. The author would have been better served with a little less character development and a little more action. Most of the story takes place in the city, shopping and eating and horsing around, and very little goes on that relates to the underlying quest of “saving the world from certain doom” until the last few chapters.

It is as though this book was written merely as filler, a way for three of the main characters from the previous book to pick up apprentices, and for one of the original party to break away from the group. Some of the events are interesting, but the lack of action is disappointing and anticlimactic. If the last few chapters are any indication though, it looks like the action is stepped up in book three Wizards and Wanderers (2006).

Even the addition of the new characters gets predictable after a time, except for the one which grows out of a plate of pancake syrup, each is saved from a bad situation and has to take a binding oath of loyalty
which he or she does without question. An expedient way to move the plot along to be sure, but not entirely realistic. All in all though, readers who enjoyed the first novel will find much to work with here.
Crystalwizard has written some interesting and engaging characters which keep the pages turning and the reader wanting to know how it all ends.

wizards
Book Three: Wizards and Wanderers
Wizards and Wanderers is the third installment in a six book series of continuing adventures following the trials and travails of Dale and his ever-growing band of followers.  Dale is a traveler from another, more advanced world who finds himself marooned on a planet that resembles 18th century Earth, where magic has flourished and taken the place of technology.  He discovers that there is an alien invasion coming, which will destroy the world, and he is the only one who can save it.  Along the way he picks up various unlikely followers, each of which is somehow necessary to the success of the endeavor.   

Wizards and Wanderers picks up where the previous book Villenspell: City of Wizards (2005) ends. The travelers are on the road attempting to make it to the ocean in the west before the invaders arrive.  With each encounter on their travels, Dale manages to add more members to his collection of misfits.  This time the newcomers include a fallen deity, a collection of imps, and a loquacious dwarf.  Each of these new arrivals is necessary to the success of the mission and they manage to integrate themselves into the group even if they start out unliked and untrusted.

The adventures in this book take the group through an enchanted forest filled with sprites, deep underground into an abandoned dwarven mine, into an isolated wizard’s tower, and face to face with a dragon.  We learn a bit more about Dale’s arch-nemesis, and that revelation comes as quite a surprise.

Each book builds on the one previous and leaves the reader wanting to find out what happens next.  The author works hard to create an epic adventure, and so far has been fairly successful in this endeavor.  There are some areas that could use a little improvement. For instance, the layout is in a style usually reserved for academia that makes it very distracting. This series very much resembles a role-playing game campaign, the influence of Gary Gygax and Dungeons and Dragons ™ is obvious.  This makes it a good bet for readers who enjoy fantasy style RPG’s.  A word of warning, this is not a series that can be easily picked up in the middle, the reader needs to begin at the beginning with Wizard’s Bane (2004).

Army of Misfits
Book Four: Army of Misfits
Army of Misfits is the fourth in the Sojourn Chronicles.  Even though the author is coming into the home stretch with only two more books to follow there are still plenty of stories left to tell.  Army of Misfits follows the now familiar format of - on the road to the destination, add a few new characters to the mix, then embroil the characters in a nearly insurmountable obstacle which they finally overcome allowing them to return to the main objective.  The main objective in this case being to save the world from Gorg invaders.  Dale and his band of travelers must find King Yaybar before they run out of time.  Each time it looks like they are going to make it something stops them in their tracks.  They first have to make their way through a mountain range that is protected by a deadly magical barrier.  After doing that they need to convince the people of the mountains that they aren’t demons before the people use their own deadly force.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  

In addition to the main quest line, there are quite a few interesting sub-plots.  There is a confrontation at a pixie castle that leads to the rescue of a lovely sprite maiden who is particularly taken with Kheri.  Frost dragon Quhi takes Dale’s oath and becomes quite a useful addition to the group.  Dwarf Thoradin turns out to be not quite what he seems from outward appearances.  Faran works to understand his father and family relations a little bit better.  Dale and Aerline need a little marriage counseling.  And the reader will never guess who will join the group in the last few chapters.  Quite a nice little surprise there.

As always, this is not a stand-alone novel, one absolutely must read the series in order.  To do anything else is to miss too many of the nuances of the story, not to mention the character development over the successive books.  The series is written in a seamless line with each new book picking up exactly where the last one left off. 

Write faster Crystalwizard, write faster.  Your faithful readers will be champing at the bit to know what happens.