Having thwarted Leso Varen’s attempts to take over the kingdom of Kesh using necromancy, the magician Pug, leader of the Conclave of Shadows, learns of a threat from the Dasati, a warrior race from another dimension, that must be stopped, and he must travel to their realm to gather intelligence on how to stop them. He takes with him a mixed bag of travelling companions, none of whom knows the reason for this journey into a different dimension or if they’ll even live to tell the tale.
A parallel story introduces Valko, a young Dasati warrior destined for great things. We follow his quick rise to power and learn of the influence of his Mother, Narueen, part of the clandestine Bloodwitch Sisterhood and the real power behind the throne. Narueen seeks to make Valko the catalyst for change in the ways of the Dasati, to make them stop worshipping His Darkness (evil) and help bring to power The White (good). The third connected strand involves Miranda, Pug’s wife, and her search for the missing Varen.
Unfortunately there’s nothing new here and the main journey involving Pug and his companions is marked with tedious, exposition-filled conversations about the Dasati world, their history and the reasons for the possible attack making it impossible for any kind of narrative to flow. Valko’s story, while an interesting read, only serves to reinforce what Pug and his companions have already told us and even then, the scenes and dialogue are predictable, a word writ large through every page of what is a decidedly uneven effort from a writer that usually delivers much more than this. There is a neat little surprise at the end but, by then, it’s too little, too late.
There is also a largely very predictable – and totally unconnected – fourth story that takes up way too much of the book, involving Zane, Tad, and Jommy – Pug’s erstwhile grandchildren – as they are sent away to what amounts a to a posh boarding school and, through initial fights with the rich kids followed by subsequent teamwork, they learn that we can all get along if we stick together so that later, as knight-leutenants in the kings army, they can fight bad guys and grow up to become heroes. It’s a pointless and annoying diversion.
In fact the biggest problem with Into A Dark Realm is the same as with a lot of fantasy work – the three-book problem. There’s clearly nowhere near enough material in here for a trilogy, but fantasy stories seemingly can’t exist in any other format so we end up with so much padding. I don’t know the plans for the third novel, and on this showing I can wait to find out, but my feeling is that by trimming the obvious fat and stitching all three books together we could have had a cracking, if weighty, standalone novel. I only wish someone had told Raymond E Feist that.
Into a Dark Realm is out now from HarperCollins and is available from Amazon and Play for £4.99 delivered
Review by Robert Grant