The Wizard's Stone Review - Cave To The Cross Apologetics

The Wizard’s Stone By Herman P. Hunter

The Wizard’s Stone By Herman P. Hunter

Synopsis:

Wizard apprentice but not wizard Odo has been entrusted with a mystical and secret Wizard’s Stone of his master. The Wizard has hired the Captain and his band of sell swords to escort and protect Odo and see that he makes it to the King and Queen. It’s an easy journey – well of course not, with all sorts of evil and villainy and treachery afoot!

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Review

Having read the novella “The Revenant and the Tomb” by Herman P. Hunter (and I enjoyed that story), I was interested to check out a full novel if not in the same universe then in the same fantasy style that I enjoyed from Hunter. In this fantasy world, it appears as if God exists in the same way He exists in our world, this world just has more direct magic and corrupted evil monsters.

With any story, the question is do you data dump the world onto the reader or do you discover it along the way with the plot? The latter is done here but to the extent you have some grasp on the setting and background and previous factions and wars and the like. More time needed to be allotted to more world-building and with a band of mercenaries that “have seen it all” and “been there, done that”, the setup is there. Even the main character, Odo, is the foil for the audience. The strong characters are the mysterious mercenaries that we only open up to about halfway to 3/4th of the way through the book sadly. One of the best is the muscle with a lot to offer that is sadly silenced too quickly. All characters in the party are there to build up the Captain as a tough but honorable grey-hat. There is some good character-building here that help build the climax. The telling of the portion is done well and through a couple of the mercenaries. The show portion is lacking other than the Captain continuing the job of protecting Odo. I believed the payoff but it wasn’t as heightened as it could have been.

Odo exists as a character and it seems my joke of fantasy taking the farm boy who knows only his little world until he’s forced to go out into the big wide world holds true here. However, there was quite a bit that I didn’t get. As a wizard’s apprentice, he seems to be able to do some magic but he’s not a wizard and talks of them as if they are a race or at least something born to a person. It seems either Odo believes that and is wrong or it’s just not clear as he can do some magic by saying magic words and doing some rune protection over the MacGuffin. However, his magic is so weak it seems to not really work, except when it does. Odo grows as a character over time but I kept reading him as kind of the soft, sniveling guy with a couple of plot points he shined through on.

The journey has several solid parts and the impending doom around every corner is pretty solid. There are a few turns that happen that seem to be more for the sake of the story and not really hinted at within the characters’ beliefs, attitudes, or signaling. My biggest issue is with the ending and how much it affects the journey aspect – and even some of the character responses.

No spoilers. An issue I had with “The Revenant and the Tomb” was the quick ending and while the reveal here is more timed out there’s a time from the reveal to the resolve of Odo that I just didn’t find believable at all. Then there’s the realization that the bad guy motivation is only consistent if they believe what Odo believes even though I’m pretty certain the bad guy would know better. Even if I’m mistaken, the motivation from the bad guy is only there if he and Odo believe the same thing or he has nothing better to do. But it is those final pages where Odo is told he has some time to make a decision and he makes one quickly. The emphasis seems to be on what is the point of the story and it’s his learning from the Captain and others in his journey of growth – but there is just so much that is unresolved emotionally.

I once again listened to the audiobook and the narrator, Steve Fortune, knocks it out of the part again.

Not a bad book by any means but quite a bit that I took issue with and found a lot unresolved. I did not like the ending at all and not sure spending more time to flush out the details would have helped me there. Some good character work in there for a couple of characters but not much with the main. I would have also liked to have seen some more implications of a fantasy world in which God exists.

Final Grade

D+