The Hunter's Rede - The Chronicles Of Ealiron, Book One [Kindle Edition]

Despite my fears that the promise of the cover blurb might be too good to be true, The Hunter's Rede turned out to be one of those old-school pulp fantasy tales that hits all the right notes. F.T. McKinstry has built an interesting world here, with a fascinating system of magic, and put an interesting protagonist at the forefront. It takes a long while before Lorth makes that transition from protagonist to hero, but that's a large part of the story's charm.

Lorth is a great character, reminiscent of such pulp heroes as Conan, Elric, and Fafhrd. He's a self-serving loner, with an utter disregard for rules, and a recklessness borne of the legends that have grown around him. That's not so say he's a bad guy, just a selfish, pragmatic, amoral man with a somewhat distasteful job to do . . . which he happens to do very well. Like his predecessors, Lorth is also a man of deep-rooted passions, with loyalties that are sometimes short-lived, but no less significant for it.

The story here is well-told, moving along at a brisk pace. For such a short book - more a novella than a proper novel - there's a surprising amount of political intrigue and developing relationships to carry the story along. We're fed background details as we go, with no awkward moments of exposition, and no extended flashbacks to pull us from the main thread of the narrative. Like I said earlier, the system of magic is quite intriguing, but also smartly limited, keeping the overall story grounded in intelligent resolutions, as opposed to exaggerated games of one-upmanship.

While this first book works well as a self-contained story, there's more than enough potential left unexplored for subsequent instalments in the further Chronicles of Ealiron.

The Hunter's Reds takes you to a world filled with magic and warfare. Lorth is a trained assassin, one of the best around. His latest assignment pulls him into war. Forced to take sides and to defend himself, the reader slowly learns about Lorth's unique heritage and unique magical abilities.

F.T. McKinstry creates a wonderful story with a great plot, heavy political intrigue, plenty of blade action, and even a bit of love. The central point of this tale is that one single man can make a difference, and change the world. This author is a serious fantasy writer whose work deserves to be followed closely.

The Hunters' Rede, Book One of The Chronicles of Ealiron, offers an absorbing look into the psyche of a hired assassin with limited but well-disciplined magical powers. Making his way through kingdoms at war and encountering treachery, grief, comradeship and love, he begins to understand that he must move beyond his allegiance to the rules of the Hunter's Rede which have served him so well for so long.

Sometimes the creation of an entirely new fantasy or alien world, with all its history and complexities, presents problems for the reader struggling to make sense of all this new input. Not so this novel. There is no clumsy, heavy exposition, and the straight chronological narrative, all focusing on the point of view of the main character Lorth, leads you easily through setting up the world in your mind. It would really have strained this narrative to have to undergo flashbacks to other characters' point of view, other times and places; the straight chronology centered in one character provides a strong backbone for this book. A detailed but not overlong glossary at the end of the book also helps nail this world down.

It's as if Lorth is visiting various solidly-delineated theater sets upon which the actors emerge. These settings have an emotional resonance that ground you in the narrative. The story itself is fast-moving action; when Lorth muses about the magical realm and his role in it, his ruminations dovetail well with the story, never slowing it down. The book also deals with the problem of magic and what limitations it may or should have. For instance, if a given wizard has too much power and can always win by wrinkling his nose like Samantha in Bewitched, what's the point of any novel dealing with magic? Wizards and other magicians in this novel definitely have limitations.

The Hunter's Rede itself is a set of rules or advice for assassins like Lorth; it's detailed and is brought to bear on the Lorth's consciousness at crucial points, but you don't have to memorize the rules. They just unfold and make sense at the right time.

Lorth is fascinating in that he doesn't possess infinite magical power, just enough for his needs as a skilled assassin. He's a sort of a junior varsity magician who can make mistakes and act impulsively, and finds himself in all sorts of trouble as he flees from his pursuers and must use his excellent hunter's reflexes to cope. Yet it's gradually revealed that he has unique and unruly wizard capabilities that he needs to come to terms with, and that he has a major role to play in this world.

The author has a great ability to tap into modes of magical or shamanistic thinking and make them come concretely alive. Various power modes unfolding in Lorth's mind often strike the reader with uncanny force. A major strength of this novel is the sense-drenched depiction of internal psychic events.

I am much looking forward to the next volume in the series, The Gray Isles.

Michael D. Smith