Lee R. Kisling

A sweet homage to traditional fantasy, but with a fresh twist to most of the tropes. Love and courage in their many forms, high adventure, gentle humor, and some really interesting ideas and language.

When the enemy army approaches and all the hoofbeats & drums shake the earth, Kisling has fun describing it this way:
It was no mere meteorological event, however, no earthquake or dust bowl that caused the tremors and the haze. It was nothing less than the incipient turbulence of the ancient territorial imperative. It was the forward momentum of an ineluctable historical tide. It was the vast and relentless reverberations of theocratic adventure, the seizures and smog of social evolution. /P/ It was the Turk."

So, ok, I wish the author had used a fictitious enemy instead of being offensive. These aren't even particularly Turkish people. Also, he isn't especially good at making female characters complex and authentic. But they're fine, really, not just as special as they could be.

Another idea that intrigued me was revealed when the hermit Shiefelbine comes out to help the king and says that he learned something from the flowers, but that: "'Many flowers tell lies. It's a nasty habit they learned from the insects. You have to be careful whom you believe nowadays.'"

And then the MC's reaction: "Not only did he [the hermit] talk to plants but he didn't believe them! If flowers could talk, why would they talk to him? And why would they lie? If you had to live your entire life in a cave to know these things, eating toads, sleeping on damp rocks, was it worth it?""… (mehr)