Customer Reviews

Quest of the Seal Bearers Book 1: The Warriors Return

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

Jandor Mason founded the Action and Adventure Club when he was fifteen. Now ready to graduate and go off to college, he and the other seniors were preparing for their last yearly adventure with the A&A Club. The twenty club members board Mr. Eastman's private jet with their chaperone, Mrs. Guardman. The plane heads for the Isle of Adventure and the boys and girls aboard have no idea just how big an adventure they will soon be involved in, nor just how much it will change them and their lives.



None of the members of the A&A Club have ever heard Mendala. But they are about to collide (or is it merge?) with it and its people, good and bad. Their task? To destroy the Book of War, find the Five Jewels, and save the Universe. Their destiny? Read and see.



Harry Potter, Stargate, and Xmen, move over and make room for the Quest of the Seal Bearers. Thank you, Alan (W. G. Coleman) for the new world to explore and new people to meet.



Reviewed by Wanda C. Keesey

With the long-lost Book of War, wizard Davron can summon creatures who cannot be killed. He invades the mountain command of the world's leader and sends the legal government into exile, then consolidates his gains. But that world is only the beginning of Davron's plans. Using magical powers, he hopes to expand from one plane of existance to the next, until all of creation is under his control. The Book of War was defeated once before, and the planet leader, Fantasma, knows that he'll have to assemble the descendents of the original warriors who defeated the book thousands of years earlier. But the descendents aren't on the planet at all--instead, they're on Earth.

The Action and Adventure Club of Greengale, USA, is planning its big annual adventure. They agree to attend a fantasy-adventure resort, but Fantasma's power sends their plane into a crash landing in an uncharted island. Once there, Fantasma explains his dilemma, including the fact that the Action and Adventure Club contains the descendents of the original heroes. The group is sent to Fantasma's world, but something goes wrong--and they are scattered across both time and space. Gradually, they seek to find one another, facing attacks by Davron's armies and Book of War creatures. Worse, Davron captures one of the members and somehow converts her, making her his wife.

Author A. W. G. Coleman has many of the ingredients of a successful story. The fish-out-of-water Earth humans in a magic realm is always popular. The powerful and destructive enemy who is aided by treachery in the good-guy camp generally creates the basis for some interesting adventure. And it's obvious that Coleman has put a lot of thought into his world-building with such fun (if weird) innovations as a place where everyone becomes comics, two incompatible forms of magic power, and thousands of years of history. Coleman's prose is workmanlike enough, not distracting the reader from the story.

A few flaws keep QUEST OF THE SEAL BEARERS: THE WARRIORS RETURN from reaching its potential. The large number of club members, with frequent scene changes between them, makes it difficult to keep track of who is doing what, or to learn enough about the characters to care about their problems. If Coleman had intended QUEST to fit into the humor class of SF/Fantasy, he needed to push the envelope a little harder and give a few more laugh-out-loud moments. If that wasn't his intent, it's hard to understand why he included some of the settings and action. Then there's excessive good fortune of the school-aged club members, coupled with incompetence on the part of the enemy. It's hard to take the adventure seriously when the enemy is so incompetent.

QUEST comes close to being truly enjoyable. It has a lot of positive energy and ideas. Unfortunately, Coleman doesn't quite pull them together into a meaningful whole. Still, QUEST makes a light fun read.

A great first book which captures your imagination and keeps you interested all the way through. A little hard to keep up with all of the characters at once but as soon as you have them sorted you can't put the book down!

This is an absolutly wonderful book! It's exciting, funny, dramatic and romantic and I'm not saying all this just because I know the Author;) This is a lovely fanticy book and there is something in it for everyone. Read and Enjoy!

Thousands of years ago on the planet Mendala, a tyrant named Multus unleashed a sinister force called the Book of War. Using the power of the book, he was able to create indestructible creatures as soldiers in his army. Multus was defeated, but now the Book of War has resurfaced in the hands of Davron, whose goal is to rule Mendala. Davron unleashes his army and all resistance is futile.
On Earth, the teenage members of Greendale's Action and Adventure Club have embarked on their latest outing. Somehow, they are transported to Mendala and discover that they are destined to do battle to defeat Davron's forces and destroy the Book of War. Their adventures take them many places on the planet; they fight many battles and assume many roles. In the end, they are momentarily victorious and unanimously vote to remain on Mendala rather than return to Earth.
I found the book to be tedious to read, with several plot devices that I found annoying. The first was the so-called indestructible warriors of Davron's army. It turns out that they are not indestructible, when really necessary, a spell was found that disintegrated them. Secondly, there is a bit of secret agent absurdity. There is a building in Sleuthmore, Mendala with a sign on the door, "Top-Secret Headquarters of SAM, Special Agents of Mendala." After a grand entrance through a window by a member of the adventure group, he gets up and announces himself by saying, "The name is Bond, Mike Bond." I know that the author was trying to engage in a bit of satire, but in my opinion, it fell flat. Finally, the majority of the spells had the form, "Mittius Mandamus ****" where "****" is replaced by the desired action. For example, "Mittius Mandamus Sleep" was used to put guards to sleep and "Mittius Mandamus Fire" was used to conjure up a fire. The simplistic nature of the set of spells bored me.
The action was also not something that really excited me, although I must confess that I generally do not read fantasy. Generally, I find stories where normal people are suddenly thrust into roles as planet-saving heroes difficult to tolerate, even if they are in the fantasy genre. They can only work if there is at least a brief training period like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Absent that, a teenager suddenly thrust into a situation where they must save a strange planet simply would not live long. These teenagers have no such mentors.