This strange story continues. I say strange because it’s not my regular kind of science fiction (military). It’s about a group of kids, now grown up, who went to a school to learn to become Charons or Technomages. It’s all about nanites. If you don’t know what those are, then you’re really not into science fiction. Nanites are the coming future. They are simple put, very, very, very tiny machines that work together to get amazing things done. The Charons know how to control nanites and their bodies are full of them.
Ceril, our min character, is a young man that has been through a lot. It’s a wonder he’s still alive, but he’s very much alive and soon out of his hospital bed. He has been in a coma for about three months recovering from his bout with the High Priestess in Jaronya. He lost an arm and part of a leg or both legs, I’m a little confused on that, but he’s recovered. How in the heck do you recover from something like that?
Anyway, his recovery was made possible by his “doctors” who filled his body with nanites. Instead of blood, he has nanites running through his veins and now he can “conjure” up a new arm and leg(s) which will work perfectly in place of those that are gone. Yeah, I know. Pretty convenient, but this is science fiction.
Anyway, Ceril and his friends, Saryn, Chuckie, and Harlo, have decided they need to find out who this Untouchable person is who’s destroying all the Charons and their schools. To do this, they have to go back to Ternia where Ceril and his Gramps lived and search for clues. This leads them back to a familiar place, Jaronya.
As you read in the first book, “Birthright”, Gramps isn’t the nice lovable guy we all thought he was. He seems to be pretty crazy to me. Ceril knows there’s some kind of connection between the Untouchable and his Gramps, but he just doesn’t want to believe it. He has to prove they are not the same person. He hopes to do that in Jaronya. Jaronya is a very strange place. It was created by Gramps and some of his creations are not only weird but dangerous. Ceril and his friends find out their journey is going to cost them dearly; two in particular.
I liked the writing once you get past all the bloody fights. Sword fighting can never be clean, and the author certainly makes it graphically clear that it’s not. There’s also a lot of just killing for no good reason. Why kill a receptionist who’s just sitting at her desk? Someone walks out of a room that Gramps was walking into and he crushes their head. If Gramps is a god, then I certainly wouldn’t want to be around him. And what about Ceril? Is he the same as Gramps since they are family, or are they?