Book Review: Dusk Lane

Title: Dusk Lane

Author: Jill Penrod

Date: 2014

ISBN: 978-1502247582

Publisher: Jill Penrod

Quote: "Suri, are you hurt? Say something."

In the fantasy world of Balia, Suri's parents follow a "True God" who is vaguely connected with a myth of a "Christus," but that hasn't stopped them signing contracts that married two of their daughters to one man in order to unite their tribes. The man belongs to a culture that values physical strength and cruelty. Both daughters feel horribly abused; one chooses to let herself die in the fighting when younger brother Aaden rescues Suri. The siblings now have to flee from Suri's husband's tribe, and they wander around Balia and meet other people and have adventures, one involving a decision between gods. it doe

Is this a Christian fantasy adventure? Judgment call. It's clearly a fantasy written by a Christian. The "Christus" myth in Balia may be, as some other things might be, a surviving vestige of our world echoing through a remote future, but doesn't seem connected to Christianity in our world in any obvious way. Many Pagan tribal gods had names that might have translated as "True God," just as the tribes' names for themselves might have translated as "True Humans." 

As a fantasy world Balia doesn't work for me. This is probably a matter of personal taste, and my fault; Balia obviously does work for some readers. For me, it's distracting that words and names from our world seem to tie the story into some part of our world's history or other and the story's not consistently based there. Simple sounds recur in enough different languages that "Balia" doesn't have to be connected to Bali, but what's the probability that a name like "Christus" would occur in a world with no Greek language or culture? I kept feeling that Balia ought to be based on some part of our world's history or some projection of our world's future, and not finding further evidence that it was. I know. Quibble and nitpick.

If you want to read a wholesome fantasy about nice people having adventures in a mostly primitive fantasy world, you might enjoy Dusk Lane and the other "Chronicles of Balia."