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I’ve read many books by Travis M. Riddle, and I’ve always enjoyed them, so I was excited to see that he was in my group. I’ve never read anything by Tobias Begley, nor a co-authored book by Travis M. Riddle, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Travis M. Riddle usually writes books with a slice-of-life feel, but I wasn’t sure if that would apply here. After finishing the book, I’d say it’s like Lord of the Flies meets fantasy.
We open with Felix and his family at a resort for his 18th birthday. The resort is called The Star’s Tranquility, and right away, we’re dropped into a secondary world since this is a flying resort island. Things go wrong right from the start — there’s been some kind of explosion, the island has crash-landed, he doesn’t know where his parents are, and there are dead bodies everywhere. It’s quite the opening scene. We learn later on that they’ve crash-landed in the “unclaimed lands.” Things get stranger as they explore their surroundings and find evidence that this crash landing may not have been accidental, and that they might be stuck in a trap.
We get a BUNCH of POVs in this book, which are presented one after another, with each chapter being from a different POV for the first half of the book. As I worked my way through the book, I got the hang of it, but there was a lot of head-hopping, which took a second to get used to. I’d say one of the book’s strengths is the ability to introduce a new character and have them feel fully fleshed out and then move on to another character fairly quickly. Although each character had their own vibes and I understood them while inside their heads for their chapters, when we head-hopped to someone else, it got difficult for me to keep track of which name belonged to which backstory. Your mileage may vary with this issue. I have severe ADHD, and I’m terrible with names in real life, so I may have just been spacey on my own terms and at no fault of the book.
These characters fit what you’d expect if you just took a random bunch of people from a resort and had them try to survive in the wilderness. Some of them were sweet and easy to like and root for, while others I felt were dickbags and I kind of wish they’d stfu. But that’s okay, the very broad swath of humanity that was represented created a strong sense of realness, rather than having a bunch of over-the-top characters who handle this situation a little too easily. My favorite character was probably Elsie, I just found her to be a very likeable person, empathetic, kind, and introspective. My least favorite was probably Krikarus, who was a cynical alcoholic who’s just trying too hard to be a macho dude — he thinks people who take naps are “weak.”
I really love how the magic was presented in this world; it’s really well thought out, which it needs to be if you’re going to have a magic system with rules and power levels. One of the characters, Lennela, has healing magic, and when the island first crashes, she’s picking her way through all the injured people, but she’s very hesitant about trying to heal them. Healing magic in this world is not the hand-wavey kind of healing magic where you drink a potion, and suddenly everything is better. This magic can have nasty consequences. If you heal a leg that’s bent at a 90-degree angle, that’s the way it’s going to be forever; it doesn’t just go back to the way it was, you could be stuck with lifelong deformities, and so it’s a mix of traditional medicine and magic medicine that can fix people. Without knowing where internal bleeding is coming from, she can make things worse and not better, and that’s an interesting tradeoff.
This world’s magic also has a hierarchical structure; people can level up their abilities by channeling through “gates.” Felix’s mom was a “fourth gate mage,” and she was the most powerful person he had ever met. He had never met or even heard of a “sixth gate mage” until he met Noto, another POV. Noto is an old man who has incredibly strong mental magic — meaning he can calm people, persuade them, ease them into sleep, etc. What was most impressive was that none of this was delivered via awkward info dump; everything was woven into the plot without it feeling forced.
The pacing was pretty great, I was interested right from the start, and new plot pieces were added at just the right time to keep me interested, but they didn’t come rapidfire in a way that would have made it feel rushed.