- Paperback: 548 pages
- Publisher: Swift Publishers Ltd; first edition (6 Sep 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1874082480
- ISBN-13: 978-1874082484
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 4.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 434,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
I simply cannot begin to give you an adequate overview of The Snowmelt River! It is, for me, undoubtedly the best fantasy novel I have ever read. From the front cover through to the back, Frank P. Ryan has created an epic adventure that just does not stop! --G.A. Bixler US Reviewer. Authorsworld review
Frank P Ryan returns to the realms of fantasy in The Snowmelt River. It has been utterly worth the wait. His main characters are brilliantly depicted, as are the wonderful adventures they embark on - it is hard to imagine either teen or adult getting bored by this incredible epic. --Shelley Marsden: The Irish World
Ryan is inventive. The races he peoples his strange world with are not the run of the mill elves and orcs and the magic is more of a spiritual nature than the magic of other fantasy novels I have read... The enemy is a faceless presence, alien to the land of Tir. His forces are savage and vicious for the sake of it. Considering that our protagonists are children, such savagery is surprisingly brutal as some of them experience it first hand or are witness to it. The author on his website mentions Tolkien, Pullman, C.S. Lewis and Gaiman when he speaks about fantasy. Here he has drawn elements that are reminiscent of all these authors and has produced a book that takes us on a fast-paced, action-packed and truly fantastical journey along the Snowmelt River. I would be willing to suspend my disbelief longer to continue the journey as there is more of this tale to be told. --Pamela Luke: Fantasy Book Review
Frank P Ryan returns to the realms of fantasy in The Snowmelt River. It has been utterly worth the wait. His main characters are brilliantly depicted, as are the wonderful adventures they embark on - it is hard to imagine either teen or adult getting bored by this incredible epic. --Shelley Marsden: The Irish World
Ryan is inventive. The races he peoples his strange world with are not the run of the mill elves and orcs and the magic is more of a spiritual nature than the magic of other fantasy novels I have read... The enemy is a faceless presence, alien to the land of Tir. His forces are savage and vicious for the sake of it. Considering that our protagonists are children, such savagery is surprisingly brutal as some of them experience it first hand or are witness to it. The author on his website mentions Tolkien, Pullman, C.S. Lewis and Gaiman when he speaks about fantasy. Here he has drawn elements that are reminiscent of all these authors and has produced a book that takes us on a fast-paced, action-packed and truly fantastical journey along the Snowmelt River. I would be willing to suspend my disbelief longer to continue the journey as there is more of this tale to be told. --Pamela Luke: Fantasy Book Review
Product Description
Chance has brought together four young people. Alan is American, Kate Irish, and the adoptive brother and sister, Mark and Mo, are Londoners - although Mo originally hails from Australia. They share a terrible secret in common, a secret that cannot be coincidence, and makes them wonder if it was fate, and not happenstance, that really brought them together, and which now binds them inseparably as friends. The four friends are drawn into the enchanted but war-ravaged world of Tír, a strange land of magic and wonder. With the help of the Amazonian army of the Shee and the courage and skill of the Olhyiu - the Children of the Sea - they sail the spectacular Snowmelt River in the mystical Temple Ship. Through a perilous wilderness, fought over by the spiritual forces of good and evil, they set out to rescue the enslaved Olhyiu and avenge the murders of their own families - a seemingly impossible quest for their arch enemy, the Tyrant of the Wastelands, is said to be immortal. The Snowmelt River is the first of a four-volume epic fantasy series, with each book a separate adventure in itself. All four novels revolve around the coming of age, and power, of the central characters, Alan, Kate, Mark and Mo, each a very different personality, yet each making his or her personal contribution to an epic odyssey.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I love epic fantasy but there just isn't enough of it around. If you think about it, you could count the good epic fantasy writers on the fingers of your two hands and still have a few fingers left. There are a number of things I look for. First and foremost, a cracking good story. The Snowmelt River has this in abundance. Next I look for really good characterisation -- characters you really love. Snowelt River has much deeper characterisation than you usually get in fantasy and it has a densely imagined fantasy world, with never-ending surprises right up to the last line. The magical ingredients and the battle scenes are among the best I can recall with modern writers, up there with Tad Williams - but without the excessively dense writing you sometimes find with the otherwise wonderful Williams. I think that Frank P Ryan has established a new classical "group-of-friends" series that will go a very long way.
Excellent!
Excellent!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although the characters are teenagers, this is a fantasy that can be enjoyed by an adult reader, such as me, as much as by a teenager. Four very different teenagers meet, as it appears, by chance in a small Irish town, where they discover that they share the fact that they are either adopted or orphans. In the case of American-born Alan, his parents have only recently died in what appears to have been an accident. In the case of the Irish girl, Kate, her parents were murdered in Africa. Meanwhile Londoners Mark and Mo have been adopted by the Reverend Grimstone - who appears anything but Christian - and his wife Bethel, though why they should adopt two children they clearly loathe is left to be explored. Could it be that the coming together of the four prospective friends is more fate than accidental? And then, little by little - and I was utterly absorbed by how the author brought this about - they are seduced by a mountain. I checked it out and the mountain really does exist. It is called Slievenamon - apparently the Gaelic means The Mountain of Women - and at the same time the fantasy theme begins to click into place. Alan's grandfather, Padraig, is the keeper of a terrible, and frightening, secret. I won't spoil it by saying what the secret is. But the four friends, whose very different characters are deeply and convincingly drawn, are attracted to the Gate of Feimhin on the summit of Slievenamon, after which they enter an extraordinary fantasy world, where nothing is ever quite as it appears to be, and where danger appears to threaten with every step.
Things change, people change, creatures change, with mind-blowing vividness and consequences. It was already happening before I even began to glimpse why each of the friends was chosen.
The Snowmelt River is a dazzling creation, one of those long, epic kinds of adventures you just love to live in for a while and don't ever want to stop.
Things change, people change, creatures change, with mind-blowing vividness and consequences. It was already happening before I even began to glimpse why each of the friends was chosen.
The Snowmelt River is a dazzling creation, one of those long, epic kinds of adventures you just love to live in for a while and don't ever want to stop.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book kept me enthralled right up to the very last sentence. I could't put it down once I started to read it. I felt myself being carried away to a land of mystery and intrigue so captivating that I forgot all my worries while I was engrossed in this wonderful book. A must read for fantasy lovers I think.
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