 |
A Name to Conjure With | Rating | |
| D | |||
| Donald Aamodt | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
When Sandy MacGregor is summoned to another world, his life takes a turn for the strange. It seems the wizard thinks he's a demon, and his very name gives him power enough to allow the cantankerous mage and his equally surly hirelings to raid the stronghold of the god Kels Zalkri. But this is to be more than a theft, if the Veiled Goddess has anything to say about it. This will be a masterstroke to defeat the evil upstart deitiy!
The book is a perfectly ordinary swoard and sorcery tale. That's the problem, though. There's nothing that really distinguishes it from all the other stories of its type. Wizard, strongman, thief and everyman raid the evil temple. Yawn. There are few unique aspects to the tale.
One of them is that every other chapter switches to the Godess' viewpoint as she looks down on what her band is doing. But that's about all she does. In her thoughts and narration it is claimed that she arranged this event, or helped the party do that, but I just don't see it. There is no coincidental event to make them do what they do, no sudden thought out of nowhere that clues them in to some crucial insight. So the chapters with the Goddess end up being little more than her gloating over her choice of people to enact her revenge on her enemy and shaking her fist at him in a, "Your doom has come at last!" kind of gesture. Done two or three times over the course of the book is okay, but she does this sort of thing at least once every single time we follow her actions.
In addition, the Goddess keeps saying to herself - and to the reader - that Sandy is tempering into a fine hero and leader for her cause, but again I just don't see it. I see him becoming more and more irritated at the sorcerer, I see the hard life he's been forced into making him physically fit (too rapidly to be credible, I might add), but I see no heroism. For that matter, Sandy never actually does anything to warrant being the main character, until the very end. Even then he generally acts as a reluctant leader, the "I don't want to be here but so long as you dragged me along let's do this right," type. But for perhaps two-thirds of the book he is nothing more than a whipping-boy for the others as he does menial labor.
In fact, in hindsight I have to wonder why he was summoned at all. Given what the sorcerer intended, he has no role at all that some hired help could not have performed. It is only the Goddess who really has need of him, and I must say that was disappointing as well. Given the setup, it is easy to guess that all Sandy has to do is say his full name in the presence of Kels Zalkri and the good guys win. That's the extent of the powers he exhibits as a demon, and it's his only role.
This story is dull and predictable, as well as repetetive, since information given in narrative exposition is frequently repeated by a character telling Sandy in dialogue. The plot is forgetable, as are the characters. I'd avoid this one and search out some better fantasy were I you.
| By Title | By Author | By Rank |