Review: Best of Both Worlds
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 14, 2014
Note, this review includes some Act 1 highlights.I just finished reading this book, and what a treat it was.  I’ve rarely if ever seen sci-fi and fantasy blended so seamlessly.  But this is as much fast paced action adventure and thriller as it is the other two genres, so I hope you can survive the genre-bending.  Done any less artfully and the mix might not have worked, but as it was, it was simply delicious.  To say that I can’t wait to see this as a movie is an understatement; I can’t stop the movie from playing inside my head.  The images were that vivid and captured not just my imagination but a piece of my soul along the way.On the fantasy side, an accomplished wizard must suffer the unbearable fate of seeing the most powerful of all spells fall into the hands of his bumbling sidekick, who he must then keep a vigilant eye on to see he doesn’t wreak havoc on the two of them, to say nothing of the world.  Just when the wizard’s fate doesn’t seem like it could get any worse, he comes to find out that he’s got the biggest, baddest sorcerers then living looking for him, out to reclaim that spell for themselves, with no small desire to see these two suffer the fates of the damned.Why need our heroes worry, you say, if they’ve got the most powerful of all spells in their hands?  Well, as it turns out, they can’t control it.  And they have no idea what they’re going to conjure next until they conjure it and if it’s going to help them or not.  When finally they get the spell to cooperate they land in the future, a thousand years into the future to be precise.  One would think that gives them some distance at last on their pursuers.  One would be wrong.  Enter the sci-fi side of the story, our present day world which makes George Orwell’s 1984 look tame for Big Brother nightmares come true, where, as it turns out, the most powerful financiers and captains of industry date back, not just to the Free Masons, but prior to that, to the original Occultus Populous, the group originally in charge of the most powerful of all spells.  Not only are these people quite adept at using magic, they’ve managed to maintain a stranglehold on power over the entire planet for generations now.  In fact they’ve been quietly awaiting the day when the spell of spells would fall into their grasp.  And that, as it turns out, is just what our heroes have unwittingly done, landed in their laps.It is in the present that our two heroes meet up with an unwitting ally, who as it turns out has been working to bring down the powers that be pulling the strings behind everything happening on the planet.  And he’s only too happy to add his computer savvy and all around tech wizardry to the pair of wizards.  The question is, will it still be enough, because they’re still outclassed in every sense of the word.  And with this preamble, we’re now just out of Act 1!  If all that wasn’t exciting enough for you, I got news for you, the author was just getting fired up, and what comes next makes what I just described sound like a relaxing day in the park by comparison.My only caveat is that the book is written in the omniscient point of view, which for modern audiences may take some getting used to.  But having utilized this ploy myself when translating screenplays into novels, I can tell you, the omniscient point of view still has a lot to offer readers.Run don’t walk to the book aisle to pick up this book!