Friday, May 29, 2009
Starlog on End of the Century
Michael Wolff has reviewed End of the Century for the "Booklog" feature of the Starlog site, and seems to have liked it.
A Sixth Century knight... A Victorian Age pair of professional adventurers... A runaway American girl in 1999... In END OF THE CENTURY, three apparently disparate elements are linked in a series of exploits involving a search for the Holy Grail. Their destinies weave in and out of different London eras as each of them are, in turn, threatened by an enemy that seems far more than human.
Roberson does a nice job of tap dancing here, deftly moving the narrative throughout various time periods without allowing any of them to become stale. And the three sets of "heroes" are well balanced: the classic knight Galaad, the cosmopolitan team of Blank and Bonaventure and the resourceful teenager Alice Fell. Rather than stereotypes, the author offers up archetypes. Roberson understands that a genuine villain calls for genuine heroes to meet in combat, and in END OF THE CENTURY, he gives readers a memorable cast of characters.
Labels: reviews