Book Review: A Story of River

Not a Fair Trade Book

Title: A Story of River

Author: Lana Axe

Date: 2013

Publisher: AxeLord

ISBN: 978-0615821535

Length: 312 pages

Quote: “The Prophet Orz has given me hope. He knows how I am to defeat these vicious creatures who have been attacking my people. Unfortunately, I know not exactly what is to be done.”

Guilt guilt guilt guilt...In 2013, just before this blog went into a dormant phase, the writer known as Lana Axe sent me a promotional copy of this book. She'd self-published it as an e-book only and wasn't marketing printed books, but she'd mailed me a printout so I could blog about it. I didn't blog about it. I mentioned it at Bubblews, during that fiasco, but not here. And it's a good book within its genre; it deserved to become a real physical book you can buy at a bookstore...

The good news is that it did. The e-book created markets for this novel and others by the author, and now Axe has a full Amazon page of real books.

If you’ve read all of Lord of the Rings and its associated literature, and you want more...there was only one J.R.R. Tolkien, and he wrote only as much as he wrote. Nobody else does Tolkien-style fantasy epics the way Tolkien did. A Story of River, being a recent American story in the same vein, can only suffer by comparison. This is a pity, because it’s a good story in its own right.

In this fantasy world “elemental” spirits, like rivers, have mortal but very long-lived humanlike forms with some of the superhuman powers of the natural objects of which they’re the spirits. River’s humanlike form is centuries old but seems young enough to belong in a family with an elfin wife and a mix of children, five elves and two elementals.

Per genre requirements, there’s a conflict between nice and nasty sides, each army composed of a mix of human-like and alien species. Intertribal and interspecies alliances often reflect authors' feelings about intertribal and international peace. The nice army always wins the final battle (unless it’s Lewis’s Last Battle, and arguably even if it is), but it’s always a close match. One thing or person shifts the balance in favor of good, and in this story you know, long before the end, that that person will be River. You always knew that a river is a delightful thing, helpful, friendly, except when it’s in flood and deadly dangerous. If a river could be a man and join an army, that army would be unstoppable. So in this story he does, and it is.

Predictable? Yes, but Lord of the Rings is predictable; Beowulf is predictable; the Iliad is predictable. The pleasure of reading epic battle stories is not waiting to find out which side wins, but watching to see how, and what happens along the way.

If you order A Story of River in support of this web site, you'll not get that galley-like printout that I received in the mail years ago. You'll get the book shown above. Three more books of similar size will fit into the package; all of them can be books by Lana Axe, if you like fantasy epics. Since they're self-published they'll be offered as new books, $15 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment.