The Reign of the Departed
The High and Faraway, Book One
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A young man looking for death finds purpose in a world beyond our own in this sweeping fantasy from Greg Keyes (The Briar King, Newton’s Cannon).
Errol Greyson hadn’t intended to commit suicide. Or so he told himself. But waking up after his “cry for help” in the body of a wood-and-metal construct magically animated by Aster?the strange girl from school?was not a result he could have imagined.
Aster’s wild explanations of a quest to find the water of health that would cure her father seemed as unreal as her description of Errol’s own half-dead existence, his consciousness stuck in an enchanted automaton while his real body was in a coma from which it might never wake. And of course, they would need to recruit a girl?a virgin, no less?who had been dead for thirty years, to lead them through something called the Pale, beyond which a bunch of magical kingdoms existed. Plus, the threat that Aster could turn him off like a light switch, sending him into a hellish oblivion, was a convincing incentive to cooperate.
It all seemed quite mad: Either Aster was nuts, or Errol was hallucinating. But if it meant a new chance at life, he reckoned it was worth playing along.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This ambitious but flawed first installment in Keyes's High and Faraway series veers into puzzling and convoluted territory without enough backstory to keep it anchored. After attempting suicide, Errol Greyson wakes to find himself trapped inside a wooden body, his human form lying comatose in the hospital. His spirit has been married to the automaton by Aster Kostyena, who's compelled to restore her father's cursed memory and needs Errol's help to travel to the magical Kingdoms and find the water of health. Joined by a cast of mystical characters, Aster and Errol traverse the dangerous terrain, narrowly evading the Sheriff of the Marches and a number of his allies as he pursues them in hopes of settling his own debt. Romantic side plots inundate Errol's story line; this contrasts bizarrely with repeated depictions of underage female characters being sexually assaulted, and with the introduction of a pedophilic antagonist. Keyes (Lord of Souls) often deliberately withholds vital information, but this tactic breeds more confusion than interest in reading further, and most readers will give up and drift away well before the end.
