Wizards and Wanderers: Book Three of the Sojourn Chronicles
Crystalwizard
Reviewed by Sarra Borne
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).