Customer Reviews

The Stone of The Tenth Realm

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Review for The Stone of the Tenth Realm
By Beth Touchette

In C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy escape refugee life in World War II England and enter a beautiful, magical kingdom. As powerful princes and princesses, they face and eventually overcome the same evil forces terrifying them in London.

I still love to read about allegorical battles and mythological creatures, but as a forty-four year old, I also like adult humor, romance, and ambiguity in my literature. Eva Gordon's The Stone from the Tenth Realm is Narnia for multicultural grown-ups.

The story begins in a Nazi concentration camp. Sophie Katz's existence is a grey blur of well-researched misery.

Then, Sophie's grandfather, who is gifted in Kabblalistic Jewish magic, constructs Sophie's escape. Like the transition in Wizard of Oz, Sophie is transported from out of the monochrome haze of war time Europe to the Technicolor forest of the Tenth Realm. She meets talking ravens, trolls, and dwarves. All the characters are described with adult thoroughness. I was surprised at how much the book taught me about wolf and raven biology.

Sophie's tender yet erotic love scenes with a Scottish werewolf made me happy that I was not in Narnia anymore.

Like the characters in Narnia, however, Sophie soon realizes that she will have to battle a parallel form totalitarianism in the Tenth Realm as the Nazism in Europe. Luckily, she has the love of a good man/wolf, the friendships of dwarves and wizards, and her own gift of alchemy to help her.

Although i'm generally not a reader of fantasy, Eva Gordon took me on a a mythological journey from a Nazi concentration camp to a different realm of imagination. Watching the main character Sophie transform into another realm was not only fascinating and unusual but mind-boggling as she enters a magical dimension that could be equal to the world she left behind.
A very different read for me but I enjoyed Ms. gordons work immensely and I'm glad i changed my own literary scenery.

Kate Genovese
author of "Two Weeks Since My Last Confession"
www.kategenovese.com

Eva Gordon begins her story about Sophie Katz in the sad and horrendous conditions of a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Although not a religious woman, she and her parents have been selected for imprisonment and extermination because of the Jewish blood in their veins. Although her individual story is fictional, it is rooted in dismal fact.

Through the help of her very spiritual, Kabbalist grandfather and a Golem, Sophie is permitted to escape to another realm, one which she chose mistakenly and full of magic and ultimately love.

This new realm disturbingly parallels the land she escaped from - this one is also filled with magic and fantasy creatures that make even the most secular want to believe.

Sophie and her Druid, Werewolf husband join forces with soldiers of the Free Provinces to defeat the evil with heartwrenching losses along the way. Ms. Gordon tells the story in a most captivating way and makes it difficult for the reader to put the book down.

Whether it is extensive research or just Eva Gordon's talented writing ability, she manages to successfully combine brutal history with paranormal fantasy in a way that respects authenticity as well as entertains.

As an avid reader of science-fiction as well as epic fantasy titles such as "The Dark Tower" or the "A Song of Ice and Fire Series" when I first heard the premise of this book I was immediately interested and ordered it as soon as I could.

Now, before I began reading this I was about half-way through book six of the "Wheel of Time" Series by Robert Jordan and wasn't at all interested in starting another book while in the middle of another. However from reading just the very first chapter I was hooked.

Eva Gordon presents to us a world as vast as ours, and can literally create an endless amount of stories and tales that have to do with the "Tenth Realm." Every possible magical creature is presented into her novel from werewolves, to golems, to dragons, to dwarfs, to even hippogriffs.

Unlike the "masters" of this genre who spend a huge amount of time detailing every single bit or piece of information from character descriptions to settings, Gordon instead provides the story in a very crisp, and light prose, not bogging the reader down in un-necessary details and keeps it going with action sequences every couple of chapters.

I especially enjoyed her tactfulness while writing out details of certain battle sequences.

The characters are real for what they are, and act and behave in ways that we would expect them too, not like carbon copies as featured in other fiction stories.

The Plot (as read from the cover):

Sophie Katz, a Jew, escapes a Nazi concentration camp. By way of Prague and with the help of a golem and a magic stone she is transported into the Tenth Realm, a magical dimension that parallels the world she left behind. Logan MacLeod, hunted for a crime he did not mean to commit, runs to the Bestiary, a forest, so dangerous no man dares enter. Drawn by his bagpipes, Sophie and Logan meet. Even as love ensues, the dark evil of the Third Reich parallels the Tenth Realm, led by Gustaf Hissler, Adolf Hitler's doppelganger. Together they must join the forces against Hissler from the Tenth Realm and stop Hitler from her realm. Will they survive?

The rest of the story details their magical adventure through love, war, and the discovery of forces beyond scientific control. I greatly enjoyed this book and was surprised I finished it as quickly as I did.

I would definitely recommend this book for anybody who wants to discover fantasy and/or rediscover their fantasy taste through a fresh new author without having to read 400 plus pages of unnecessary details like other current authors in this field.

However, due to the strong graphic nature of some sex/violent scenes (deflowering as well as rape) I would not recommend this novel for pre-pubescent teenagers or smaller children. Definitely an enjoyable read though for adults/young adults with OPEN MINDS.

Eva Gordon you've done a good first novel and I can't wait to read more of your work.

I agree with the other glowing reviews posted here; Eva Gordon has crafted a wonderfully entertaining novel in The Stone of the Tenth Realm. The book combines a rare imagination with exacting historical research. The result is a plausible and enjoyable read. She also has an art for character development, which takes one well beyond the cardboard cut outs and stereotypes that litter the landscape of this genre. One can add to this, an eye for story design that even Robert Mckee would be proud of. A good writer knows what to leave out and what to put in, and how to construct a plot that will keep readers turning pages. Eva Gordon is one of those elect few.

With all this wrapped up in an accessible, fast paced style of prose, The Stone of the Tenth Realm is well worth a read. Five stars from me.

Unusual science fiction. The story line moves to fixate one's interest throughout the entire book.