Steve Wilkinson volunteers to participate in a sleep experiment at his college, but something goes terribly wrong. As his spirit is wandering in the land of dreams, he is called through to another world/dimension by a wizard. In this world, there are the traditional fantasy races: Olvir/elves, Umbrian/humans, etc. The enemy is the Morvir, a country where male children are taken from their homes at age 5 and trained for war. Only the best become officers and soliders, the rest are castrated and sent back to work the fields and do other menial labor. They are ruled by the Dark Queen who wants to take over the land. The only one who can stop her is the Dreamer...
Click here to see the rest of this review...
Unfortunately, Steve has no idea what is going on. He is a typical college student and understands little about battle, honor and such. However, he is a fast learner. He quickly becomes one of Erelvar's legir (sworn man) and becomes embroiled in the conflict between the races.
This is a fast paced fantasy adventure. The world was familiar, yet slightly different than a traditional fantasy setting, which was fun. The characters were well-drawn. All of them learned, developed and matured throughout the novel. Martin spent some time showing the war through all of the different races so that the reader could understand how they viewed the conflict. Each of the characters had weaknesses and all suffered crippling losses. Steve's knowledge of technology helped, but he didn't single-handedly save the world. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy. Even though it is rather typical in the premise (person from modern world sucked into another world where he is the only one who can save them from destruction, etc.), Martin's writing style makes this book a great read.
The review of this Book prepared by Debbie