Across the Face of the World

by Russell Kirkpatrick

(Book one of 'Fire of Heaven')

So in the prologue we are introduced to the Big Evil Dark Lord, who rambles on a lot about stuff that we don't quite understand, but seems foreboding and lets us know what kind of fantasy novel we are reading. Then the first chapter abruptly transitions to a tiny village in the far upper left corner of the big map, where we meet our protagonist Leith, a naïve young man who appears to be nothing out of the ordinary. Before long he leaves on an Epic Journey, in the company of a grumpy old man who turns out to be more than he seems, the bumbling village mayor who may have been somebody's limp idea of comic relief, and Leith's unrequited love interest who they are forced to bring along by chance, against their better wishes.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, it's probably because at some point in the past you've read a terrible generic epic fantasy novel. Kirkpatrick seems to have based his series on the mother of all generic epic fantasy series', Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. The title of his series 'Fire of Heaven' is very similar to the name of one of Jordan's novels 'The Fires of Heaven', plus even by the end of the first book you can see he's actively planning to turn the story into a huge sprawling out of control mess that will go on forever, Jordan styles.

While Jordan has his good points (or at least he used to), Kirkpatrick's writing has little to recommend it. His prose is dull and boring, the characters are one dimensional and generic, and the plot is a tired retread of the same old story I must have read a dozen times in my adolescent years.

There's very little magic in this book, (that's magic in the literal sense). It's unusual for a fantasy novel, but it can work out well, as it did in George Martin's 'A Game of Thrones', but when there's so little else of interest going on, it might've been a good idea to add it in. Definitely needs way more frozen zombies.

The point of difference to this series is that the author is a geographer and has put a great deal of effort into the maps and into thinking about the climate and terrain of his world. And to be fair, this has resulted in a lot of detailed, evocative descriptions of the natural landscape in the story, but unfortunately giving the passive world so much character only emphasizes how little personality his actual characters have.

The world history and backstory are particularly generic. There's an evil immortal planning to conquer the world, and there's a long dead civilisation which used to wield powerful magic. If there are any interesting twists coming up in the story, he should have at least hinted at them before the end of the first book, because I'm definitely not buying the second.