Review: Stunningly creative: a must-read for fantasy & sci-fi fans
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 7, 2012
It's a humbling, rarely-experienced feeling to emerge from a book feeling like a tourist reluctantly returning from adventurous escapades on foreign terrain. Sci-fi and fantasy afficionados already thrive on imagination, but The Lodestone Trilogy pushes the boundaries of creativity, bringing to its pages a depth and multidimensionality executed to a truly rare degree. Enter the world of Kelanni and beyond in this intergalactic epic, and you'll find yourself experiencing surround-sound immersion into a brilliantly-constructed reality. If you're like me, you'll return repeatedly to the provided maps, eager to find our place in the winding journeys through the Tragar and Vannoth mountains and beyond.Author Mark Whiteway manages to balance intuitive flow with fast pacing throughout his creation, rendering even this fully-imagined, complex otherworld inherently real. Readers will become so close to its multitude of characters - Keris, Shann, Rael, Boxx, and so many others. We love them because they are lovingly flawed rather than one-dimensional. We experience Shann's pain when she turns to see Alondo holding an anguished Rael. We hold our breaths as Lyall quietly explains the power of the disc and the bewildering properties of the lodestones. We share Keris's amazement when Boxx gives the Tree his memories and those of his Tree, and, like hers, our minds race to explore the consequences. Whiteway has created in each a delicate balance of innocence and aggression that smartly mimics the overall themes of the trilogy itself, blurring the distinction between what is evil or innocent, what is impossible or possible, and the unexpected twists of a multiverse reality where fate is determined by the unexpected and the status-quo is never what it seems.Highly recommended!