Quest of the Seal Bearers Book 1: The Warriors Return [Paperback]

A. W. G. Coleman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2004

Ten thousand years ago, a dark force, known as the Book of War, was unleashed upon the planet of Mendala by a demented tyrant named Multus. With this powerful weapon, he was able to create indestructible creatures that did his bidding. Five brave warriors, dedicated to stopping Multus, banded together, and trapped him in the Dark Pits. Peace returned to Mendala. The legend of Multus and the Great War passed down through the generations but eventually it was regarded as a myth. However, when the Book of War surfaced again with its new owner, Davron, all of this changed. The stage is set, and history will repeat itself unless a hero surfaces to thwart Davron's evil plans. Meanwhile, some distance away on Earth, Greengale's Action and Adventure Club is preparing to depart for their yearly vacation. The teenage members of this group are always in search of new challenges, and soon find themselves involved in the adventure of a lifetime. After being mysteriously transported to Mendala, they discover that they are the ones chosen to destroy the Book of War. Now they must unite as a team to defeat Davron. or die trying.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

If you enjoy this book then don't forget to buy the next installment of the "Quest of the Seal Bearers" saga, "The Five Jewels"

About the Author

Alan Wayne-Grant Coleman resides in Highland Springs, a small suburb just east of Richmond, VA. He received a BS in Information Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2002. When he's not creating fantasy worlds, Coleman works as a network administrator at a local non-profit organization. He also takes pride in being an active member and volunteer at his church. Besides writing and computers, Coleman enjoys being an astonishingly terrible bowler and a half-decent cook.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing (February 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589395115
• ISBN-13: 978-1589395114
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,162,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engaging, energetic, entertaining fantasy adventure, August 16, 2005

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quest of the Seal Bearers Book 1: The Warriors Return (Paperback)

Epic fantasy quests are a dime a dozen, but good ones are of course much rarer - and Quest of the Seal Bearers certainly has the makings of a good one. This first novel of the series does have the markings of a young novelist, but, in this case, that's more of a positive than a negative. A few aspects of the plot would sound silly if I described them on their own, and I don't think a more experienced author would have gone in those directions, but Coleman makes them work - and I have to give him a few bonus points for audacity in the process. In my perception, there's a youthful air of real energy swirling around the pages of this novel, and it gives the story an identity and character all its own. The Warriors Return is not only interesting and entertaining; it's just plain fun to read.

The story centers around a group of teenagers who are recruited to help save another world. These fledgling heroes crave the kind of adventure they can't find in their boring home town, so they've organized an Action and Adventure Club. This year's planned destination is Adventure Island - but the Club members never get that far. Instead, they are maneuvered into a fateful rendezvous with Fantasma, the ruler of Mendala. His planet is in major trouble, as an evil fellow named Davron has discovered the ancient Book of War and is using it to unleash horrible, indestructible monsters on his world. More than Mendala hangs in the balance because Davron's ultimate goal is to secure power over dimensions beyond that planet itself. The only individuals who can hopefully defeat Davron are the ancestors of those who defeated the last evil wizard to exploit the Book of War 10,000 years ago - and these young people are none other than the Earth-bound members of the Action and Adventure Club.

Mendala is a rich fantasy world, much like Earth yet quite exotic at the same time. Two forms of magic are in evidence there, as are some wondrous geographic locations such as the tunnels of Glorandor and the cloud-borne Rainbow Mountain with its menagerie of legendary creatures. The most striking creatures of this world, however, are the unnatural beasts unleashed by the Book of War - huge rats, flying pigs, rock soldiers, and assorted slimy and exceedingly dangerous creations borne of darkness.

There's a slight snafu in the young heroes' transfer from Earth to Mendala, leaving the club members scattered in both time and place. The majority of this first book in the series consists of the young friends finding one another and coming together for their first frontal assault against Davron and his minions. We learn a lot about the planet, its society, and its system of magic through these varied introductions to this strange new world. While it can be a bit difficult to keep so many characters straight in your head as you're bouncing back and forth between isolated groupings of them, I think the author does an excellent job of telling these mini-stories concurrently, always with a view toward bringing everything (and everyone) together in the end. Each character has a distinct story to tell about his/her experience on Mendala - a few are newly-arrived while others are well-established there already (one of them has even become a king). These individual stories really represent rich and quite interesting reads on their own, but they also effectively set the tone for the group dynamics that come later.

The magical qualities of this new world do offer some comparatively easy solutions to major problems, but all of the different talents and skills the heroes draw upon are really diverse and intriguing. The sense of danger is also quite real as the heroes are constantly harassed by infernal creatures and attacked and way-laid on frequent occasions. The big confrontation at the end also plays out well, although it carries the feel of what it is - the first major confrontation between organized forces of good and evil in a storyline that will includes additional volumes.

As a fantasy fan, I have to say I was really quite impressed by The Warriors Return, and I look forward to the second installment in the Quest of the Seal Bearers series. Coleman clearly has his own voice in the genre and is not simply re-hashing the same old fantasy quests we've read time and time again. These young characters are real and believable in their thoughts and reactions, and that fact allows the book to engage the reader on a personal level. The fact that the heroes consist of high school teenagers may make the book especially appealing to younger fans of fantasy, but fantasy lovers of all ages should find something to enjoy in The Warriors Return.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Promising fantasy story, August 11, 2005

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quest of the Seal Bearers Book 1: The Warriors Return (Paperback)

Dark clouds of doom threaten to engulf Mendala. Some 10,000 years ago, a wicked guardian named Multus opened the Book of War and threatened to plunge that planet into an age of evil. After a cataclysmic battle that narrowly averted disaster, the Book of War was thought lost forever. Now, a new threat rises in the land when a man called Davron recovers the Book of War and once again threatens to overwhelm the world of Mendala and, if all goes well, eventually launch a campaign of conquest that will stretch across all known dimensions. The Fantasma, the highest ranking ruler of Mendala, must flee from his mountain headquarters located at the geographical center of the planet if he is to carry on resistance to Davron's hegemony. Thanks to a message he receives from a servant of Elohim, Mendala's deity, Fantasma learns he must pass through a dimensional rift and locate his planet's saviors on an out of the way place called Earth. He'll need all the help he can muster since Davron knows how to use the Book of War to summon up the nastiest looking beasties imaginable, creatures that are invulnerable to all forms of attack except those from animals.

As Davron plots his schemes on Mendala and Fantasma prepares to head to Earth, the Action and Adventure Club is meeting in the town of Greengale in order to plan their next excursion. Consisting of some twenty-one members (!) ranging in age from 15 to 18, the kids in this group are thrill seekers without equal. The leader of the gang is one Jandor Mason, a no nonsense adrenaline hound who founded the group to escape the boredom of his small town. Members of the group consist of males and females from all racial backgrounds, and all of them have different talents and attributes that will help them later once they reach Mendala. We've got a musician, an electronics whiz kid, the shy chick, a bossy gal, and so on and so on. We've also got Veda Guardman, the mother of one member and the authority figure of the group who acts as chaperone on their various adventures around the globe. The Action and Adventure Club's latest trip will take them to the Island of Adventure for some unspecified fun. When their plane goes down on an uncharted island, however, they discover their plans have suddenly changed. Instead of rock climbing, they'll be fighting Davron's minions on Mendala. They'll move through a land full of enchanted creatures, strange peoples, and possess mental and physical powers undreamt of on Earth.

"Quest of the Seal Bearers" is a noble effort in the fantasy genre. I'm not too familiar with these types of books anymore; I've read a few Robert E. Howard books and some things by Terry Brooks years ago, but nothing much lately. I remember the formula pretty well, though: a band of heroic adventurers comes together to battle an evil of unimaginable power. That's essentially what we get here. The trick to these sorts of stories is to use imagination to build upon the stock formula, something author A.W.G. Coleman does well in places. I liked the concept of mental powers (called "mentus" here) mixed with spoken spells called mandamus. Those utilizing mentus abilities can track people from far away with their minds, while practitioners of mandamus can call up fire, wind, ice, and a host of other physical forms to attack their enemies. A few of the adventures faced by several of the Action and Adventure Club members work well too. A town in Mendala called Acme consists of nothing but cartoon characters and structures. Visitors turn into cartoons as soon as they cross the border, and are told upon entry to avoid "looking down" at all costs lest they suddenly take a nasty fall off a cliff or similar tall structure just as poor old Wily E. Coyote did in the old Road Runner shows. Funny!

The drawbacks to "Quest of the Seal Bearers" are three in number as far as I can see, although other readers might find a few more. One, the number of characters active in the scope of the narrative boggles the mind. There are simply far too many people to keep track of, especially when they scatter upon their arrival in Mendala. I could follow the important ones--namely Jandor, Ashley, Henry, Tabatha, and the native Mendalians like Davron and Fantasma. These characters are easy because they constitute the most powerful and important players in the saga. Once the book delved into the obstacles faced by the other kids, I started having to flip back to see who was who. A list of characters at the back of the book would easily remedy this difficulty. Two, the pacing of the book dragged in spots. The author would start describing a minor adventure that zipped along quite well, and then fail to maintain the momentum when things calmed down a few pages later. Pacing in "Quest of the Seal Bearers" started to resemble a gigantic rollercoaster--the reader rides high one minute only to descend rapidly the next. It's a frustrating problem but not an unsolvable one.

Three, and finally, the story has no real sense of danger in it. Once these kids arrive in Mendala and receive their powers, every one of them is practically indestructible. Even the weakest member of the group can quickly dispatch Davron's foot soldiers, or if they can't do that someone shows up to rescue them in the nick of time. I think giving the reader a sense that any of these characters, even the most powerful ones, could die at any minute would greatly enhance the effectiveness of the story. People fighting an evil this destructive SHOULD suffer casualties along the way. Perhaps that will happen in future installments. I'll give "Quest" three stars since I believe the author has the ability to fix these problems.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Author's Enthusiasm is Contagious and Almost Makes this a Good Read, September 13, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quest of the Seal Bearers Book 1: The Warriors Return (Paperback)

AWG Coleman must be a whirling dervish of a person: his writing spins around like a dirt bike out of control, but at the center of his book are enough good ideas that there must be a fairly solid talent present.

Spoiler: this reviewer has a low threshold of tolerance for science fiction, whether that be on the written page or the movie screen or wherever it arises to alter reality. It is not the 'fiction' part or the 'science' part that is off-putting. It is the need to make fantastical things seem real in the context of the story that is problematic.

The storyline for QUEST OF THE SEAL BEARERS BOOK is best read in Amazon.com's rather succinct distillation on the title page. Planets against planets and teenagers against villains all swirl in endless names and confusing syntax and that is where the mind wanders. Coleman has passages where his skills as a writer surface and one wishes those pages were less brief and infrequent. This book needs a sense of architecture and an occasional briefing of who is who just to keep things straight. Given that, the next volume in this projected series might be more successful.

There is an audience for Coleman's work and it probably includes younger readers, folks who enjoy video games, people who still flock to the latest sci-fi movies (they always seem to do well). So this reviewer is at a mindset disadvantage. But then that mindset also gives the opportunity to be a bit more dissecting in search of the good parts. And rest assured, there ARE good parts to this book. A suggestion - why not make the next book something other than sci-fi?....Grady Harp, September 05