Beyond the Pale (Last Rune 1) [Paperback]

Mark Anthony (Author)

Book Description

Series: Last Rune 1 | Publication Date: November 1, 1999

On a world called Eldh, an ancient gate of iron weakens. A darkness that has slept for 1000 years - the Pale King - stirs once more. On a world called Earth, a preacher of the Apocalypse blows into a Colorado mountain town with a message: the darkness is coming.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Travis, a bespectacled barkeep from Castle City, Colorado, and Grace, a regally beautiful ER doctor from Denver Memorial, wormhole their way through a magical billboard into... a Robert Jordan novel. Well, sort of. Sure, in Beyond the Pale, it's a chilling winter--not a sweltering summer--that's gripping the land. And the seals (little stone disks, no less) are weakening on the prison of the Pale King, not the Dark One. But, surprise--Travis finds that he's the first man in centuries to successfully wield the One Power... er, runes, that is... and is the sole hope of keeping the Pale King at bay.

Beyond the Pale isn't entirely derivative of Jordan's wildly popular Wheel of Time series: if nothing else, Anthony sets himself apart by having things actually happen in his book. Travis and his fellow earthling Grace end up in Eldh after surviving run-ins with the Pale King's servants on Earth. Grace, mistaken for a fairy queen, is quickly shanghaied as a spy for King Boreas, who has just convened a council of Eldh's rulers. After a series of adventures, Travis joins Grace, and the two must tangle with the mysterious Raven's Cult and a bunch of iron-hearted bad guys who are trying to derail the Council of Kings and hasten the PK's return. --Paul Hughes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Launching a new fantasy series, Anthony, an erstwhile Forgotten Realms author (Curse of the Shadowmage, etc.), makes use of the classic premise of humans from our mundane world transported to a fantasy milieu; in this case, the travelers are two Coloradans, bartender Travis Wilder and ER physician Grace Beckett. The pair are not wholly surprised at their journey, as the world of Eldh has made several bloody visitations to Colorado already, but the reality of Eldh, full of political intrigues, is still terrifying, despite the protagonists' ability to work magic there. Anthony's pacing is spotty, frequently slow?there is just not enough matter here to justify the sheer mass of words. His characterizations are also uneven, sometimes exceedingly original and moving, other times relying on simplistic fantasy archetypes. He lays down exceptionally exciting action scenes, however, particularly those set in Colorado, as when Travis must escape an onslaught of fierce creatures from Eldh. This novel is only a so-so series kickoff, but if Anthony pumps up the pace and writes to his strengths in future volumes, the series could gain many a fan. Agent, Shawna McCarthy (Danny Baror for foreign rights).
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Earthlight (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671021915
• ISBN-13: 978-0671021917
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love it! But it does sound awfully familiar..., July 24, 2000

By 

Gin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Pale (The Last Rune, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm incredibly fond of this book and fully intend to get the 2nd one. Where I utterly detested Brook's Sword of Shannara (he couldn't write, I tell you!) I find this book well written and the storyflow engaging, so much so that I can actually ignore the less than original plotline. The only problem I had with his writing style is that I found it rather difficult to identify the characters. Besides the two main characters, whenever a character reappeared after a certain period of absence in the book I had to flip back to the front just to figure out who it was.

It's also true that some parts are terribly derivative. Melia is a Polgara clone, and that part about seals weakening just screams Robert Jordan at you. We've all seen this magic system somewhere before and the "off to save the world" theme is so prevalent it isn't even amusing anymore.

For me, the bottom line is that Mr. Anthony can tell a good story. His descriptions of castle life imparted a certain feeling of reality to that episode, the characters are fleshed out well enough to make them believable. The book isn't profound or soul-grabbing, it'll never make you ponder the cosmos or the meaning of life, but it really reads well.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ... It's What You Do With It, May 21, 2003

By 

Arthur W. Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Pale (The Last Rune, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

Beyond the Pale (1998) is the first Fantasy novel in the Last Rune series. Castle City, Colorado, is an old mining town that has not changed much since the mines petered out a hundred years before. The Mine Shaft Saloon, owned by Travis Wilder, is one of the century-old establishments, although now serving a much tamer type of clientele: the local book club instead of a bunch of drunk, lustful miners. Lost tourists will sometimes find their way to the Saloon, but not very many.

In this novel, Travis notices that strange events are happening around him: the very realistic-looking billboard, the chime of bells, the laughing shadow within the ruins of the old orphanage, and the man in black in front of the ruins. There is also the big circus tent in a field next to the road for Brother Cy's Apocalyptic Traveling Salvation Show.

Later, Travis receives a phone call from Jack Graystone in which Jack declares that he is in grave ... and the phone goes dead. When his truck won't start, Travis walks over to the Magician's Attic. There Jack tells him that a darkness is coming and that he is being hunted. Jack plans to leave town but, as Travis is leaving, a bright glare like a searchlight comes rushing toward them. Jack orders Travis back inside and gives him a highly decorated stiletto to carry. An electric humming comes from the other side of the front door and the door knob turns right, then left, and right again. Then the door is hit twice hard enough to shake it.

Travis is paralyzed with fear, but Jack roars his name and calls him over to the cellar steps. The front door crashes open in a spray of splinters. Jack pulls Travis inside, closing and barring the door behind them, takes him over to another door, tells him it leads to a garden shed out back, and pushes him through. Jack flees through the tunnel and up the ladder just in time to see hot, bright light shining out of the building. Then there is an explosion and flames start erupting out the windows.

Meanwhile, Grace Beckett is an emergency room doctor at Denver Memorial Hospital. It's been a long day already and then an ambulance brings in a man with two bullets in him and a big, dense object directly in front of his heart. They lose his pulse and defib fails, so Grace opens his chest to massage his heart, but he has only a fist-shaped lump of metal where his heart should of been. Then he dies. The body is taken to the morgue, but later returns to the emergency room under his own power.

The walking corpse kills or maims anyone who gets in his way, including a policemen who is thrown, hard, against the wall. A little old lady is stuck in her wheelchair as the corpse nears the outside doors and Grace knows that it will kill her. She pulls the pistol from the cop's body and fires three shots into it, pulping the brain. The man with the iron heart topples to the floor.

This novel is about another reality on the other side of the boundary. Eldh is a world where magic works and advanced technology is either forgotten or never learned. There a monstrous evil is close to breaking the Last Rune and ending the world as we know it. All that is missing is the Runebreaker.

The author combines a number of familiar concepts into an unusual tale of sword and sorcery: alternate worlds, powerful runes, magic stones, enchanted weapons, gods and goddesses, long lost noble heirs, secret societies, angels and demons, and friendly emperors. It is something like a quest game -- the author has previously written in that field -- where the immediate objective is to find a clue to the next level, but so much happens that one loses track of the final goal. The characters also find out things about themselves and discover some new talents and powers, as well as finding clues and objects that facilitate the quest.

A goodly number of reviewers think that the author is too derivative and most mention Tolkien, Donaldson or Jordan. I remember when Tolkien finally published The Fellowship of the Ring twenty years after The Hobbit. Maybe most readers don't know or care, but Tolkien deliberately set out to write an epic tale using the ancient myths of the British Isles. None of the elements or characters were without precursors in legends and folktales. It was the British equivalent of Virgil's Aeneid, a copy of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Nonetheless, this derivative work became famous itself, much like the Aeneid and another British mythical patische, L'Morte d'Arthur. It's not what you got that counts, but what you do with it.

Highly recommended to Anthony fans and anyone else who enjoys tales of adventure and discovery.

-Arthur W. Jordin

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good, August 16, 2004

By 

William Sugarman "nprfan1" (Great Neck, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beyond the Pale (The Last Rune, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have to admit that I wasn't really expecting much from this book. The blurb on the back cover was what prompted me to buy it in the first place; I'm a sucker for good "advertising" like that when it comes to fantasy novels.

But, surprise! I opened to the prologue, with the unlikely title of "Brother Cy's Apocalyptic Traveling Salvation Show", and was instantly hooked. This is a well-written beginning to a six-book cycle, which apparently concerns threats not only to the other-dimensional world of Eldh, but also to our Earth as well.

Anthony does not seem to develop his two Earthly protagonists too well. I could not get a clear picture of Travis; one could compare him to Clark Kent just beginning to discover his powers, but that's a very broad generalization. And Grace Beckett strikes me as a Vulcan transported to the world of fantasy who is beginning to learn about her emotions. There is also a strong indication that she was abused in some way in her childhood, but nothing definite is mentioned. Hopefully Anthony will expand on their characters in later volumes.

The residents of Eldh, however, are much more fleshed out and well-defined - the Lady Kyrene seemed very sinister, King Boreas is a little more intelligent than his hulking appearance makes him seem, and Durge and Beltan are just a bit more than the standard noble defenders of the realm.

Of necessity there are some characters who are cloaked in mystery. Falken the bard and the Lady Melia, as well as Queen Ivalaine pose more questions than answers at this point. Exactly who are they, and what do they know? Are they trying to save Eldh or do they have other purposes in mind?

I do not see even vague similarities to Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series here, despite several reviewers' claims. In fact, there are far more similarities to David Eddings' "Belgariad" and "Mallorean" cycles than anything else.

I look forward to the next book in this series.