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Mark Charan Newton

The Reef Kindle Edition

by Mark Charan Newton (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

5 ratings

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Has-jahn: a continent of exotic cultures, cities and long-forgotten technology. Two members of a race once thought extinct wash up on the shores near the city of Escha. In their possession is a call for help from a human living on the little-known tropical island of Arya, where their race is being murdered. A crew of freelance explorers, led by the charismatic Santiago DeBrelt, travels to discover the mystery behind the killings. However, Santiago's controversial nature leads to him being accompanied by government agents — who wish to explore Arya and find out why Eschan naval vessels have disappeared in the seas surrounding it.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Rhoam, a city in central Has-jahn, a band of terrorists are embarking upon an epic journey to the very same waters. Still angry from an old war with Escha, they've gathered explosives and weapons, and will allow nothing to interfere with their quest for a phenomenal revenge. But secret pasts are revealed and soon all eyes turn to the coral reef off the coast of Arya.

With echoes of Joseph Conrad and China Miéville, Mark Charan Newton's first book The Reef is a modern fantasy journey with original creatures and peoples, a story of relationships foundering on tropical sands and in dark waters.

Print length

364 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor
Publication date

July 15, 2011
Reading age

18 years and up
File size

1727 KB
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Mark Charan Newton
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Kindle Edition
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0062KH7RG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor (July 15, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 15, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1727 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 364 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Customer Reviews:
5 ratings

About the author

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Mark Charan Newton

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Mark Charan Newton was born in 1981. After working in bookselling, he moved into editorial positions at imprints covering science fiction and fantasy, then later into copywriting. He has written for a variety of non-fiction publications including regularly for Whisky Magazine, as well as science fiction for BBC Radio 4. He also writes fantasy fiction as James Abbott.

He currently lives in Derbyshire. You can find him online at markcnewton.com.

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Joel A. Nichols

Ok. Way too baggy.

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2017

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World is cool. 2 crews/2 povs confused me the whole time and I couldn't tell the characters apart. Needed lots of smart edits.

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Amazon Customer

A Talented Young Writer Honing His Craft

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2012

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The Reef by Mark Charan Newton
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
The Reef by Mark Charan Newton
3
Book Name: The Reef
Author: Mark Charan Newton
Publisher(s): Pendragon Press
Formatt: Paperback / eBook
Genre(s): Fantasy
Release Date: March 24, 2008

I recently discovered that Mark's debut novel was available for the Kindle for a mere £1.43 on Amazon. Slightly curious as to why I tweeted the man himself. As always, Mark was polite, helpful and honest, and explained that the ebook of The Reef had all sorts of formatting issues, but the decision had been made to make his debut, which had been very hard to get hold of previously, available for a cheap price for his readers. Before discussing this book further I will warn you now that Mark was not being coy when he mentioned formatting issues, the ebook is full of misspellings, the word `it' is often randomly put in a bold font, and the diary entries of characters are presented in a very annoying incredibly slim column down the middle of the page. If you are a bit fussy about your grammar, spellings and presentation this book might well give you an aneurism, but if you can get past that you will be rewarded with an interesting debut novel full of ideas and creativity.

The Reef is set on the same world as The Legends of the Red Sun but in a different time and in a different part of the world, but with many of the same themes and ideas. Here the city of Escha with its corrupt Mayor and government take the role of the city of Villjamur from The Legends of the Red Sun series with their colonialist foreign policy. We quickly learn that years before an entire city, Lucher, was wiped from the face of the world for daring to defy Escha. Again an environmental disaster threatens the world in the loss of possibly an entire species that was previously believed to be extinct, and again the powers that be care more about lining their pockets and possible threats to their own power. Other features of this novel that will be familiar to readers of Mark's Legends of the Red Sun series are the fantastic creatures that populate his world such as the rumels, and Mark's first look at the difficulties in an inter species relationship, and some new species, that like those in Legends of the Red Sun partly resemble species from ancient Greek mythology, the icthyocentaur and the furies. In effect The Reef can be seen as Mark's test run for the longer and more epic Legends of the Red Sun series.

Moving away from comparisons to The Legends of the Red Sun, I would actually compare this novel to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Santiago DeBrelt plays the Professor Challenger role leading a team to a remote island where the previously thought extinct species, the ichthyocentaurs, live, with Manolin in the Edward Malone role. Just like in The Lost World the team discover that a tribe of humans already live on the island in harmony with the ichthyocentaurs, but their peace is threatened by the furies (taking the role of the ape men of The Lost World). Unknown to the team of adventurers, the islanders and the ichthyocentaurs, the furies are not quite the malevolent attackers they first appear, but are protecting the world from a much bigger threat, the Quidlo. This storyline is told alongside that of a concurrent storyline (just like in The Legends of the Red Sun series, there is more than one storyline to follow and they only come together at the end) that of a group of terrorists or freedom fighters looking to avenge the destruction of Lucher.

As I said before this is a debut novel where Newton is still honing his craft, and this can be seen in how clumsily the two storylines work together. In his later books each storyline feels cleverly crafted and integral while here the tale of the Jella and her freedom fighters feels secondary. Things are not helped by how clumsily the two storylines are woven together as the plot of Jella and her band is given several chapters in a row at the beginning of the novel, before being dropped except for an occasional chapter until the end. When the two storylines come together it's almost an afterthought, there is a brief conversation between Santiago and Jella, and then finally the second storyline comes to an admittedly dramatic conclusion. My other gripe is how unresolved all the plotlines feel, while admittedly there is a lot of power in the open ended ending, here though things simply feel like they have been rushed to a rather unsatisfactory conclusion. Previously peaceful characters seem unaffected by the death and chaos surrounding them, and others simply disappear of the pages with no ending at all. It's almost as if Mark wanted to put this book to bed so he could get on with his real task of writing his Legends of the Red Sun series.

These criticisms aside, there is much to admire in this novel. Newton is already showing a deft hand at writing sympathetic and believable characters and then spinning our perspective of them by showing them through another character's less sympathetic eyes. Manolin goes from being seen by the reader as a naïve, wide eyed scientist so cruelly abused by his wife, to an arrogant ingrate who either cruelly neglects those who care for him or takes advantage of them for his own needs oblivious to the hurt he causes them. Newton paints the characters in shades of grey, and ultimately the correct view of Manolin involves elements of both portrayals. The interactions between the characters is well done as well, by jumping through the different points of view of each character the reader can both understood why certain conflicts have arisen, and why the characters react in the ways they do. It's just a shame that some characters are given better resolutions to their arcs than others.

In conclusion I would recommend that any fans of Mark Charan Newton's other novels snap this up for its bargain ebook price, and bearing in mind the lowness of the price, forgive the formatting issues! The novel shows a young writer honing his craft, and while it has its flaws, the creativity on display and brilliant character writing more than make up for these.

2 people found this helpful

Amberyl

Ein ruhiges Buch mit seltsam unspektakulärem Ende

Reviewed in Germany on March 6, 2013

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Die Schauplätze dieses Buches finden sich in der gleichen Welt, in der bereits Newtons Tetralogie „Legends of the Red Sun“ angesiedelt ist, wobei "The Reef" inhaltlich nichts mit dieser Tetralogie zu tun hat, und zeitlich in der Geschichte seiner Welt wohl wesentlich (Jahrhunderte) früher einzustufen ist, worauf etwa die Tatsache hindeutet, dass die Protagonisten dieses Buches noch einen echten historischen Bezug zur „Technik“ haben, die in der erwähnten Tetralogie schon mehr als eine Art unerklärbare „Magie“ verstanden wird.

Grundsätzlich teilt sich die Geschichte in zwei Haupthandlungsstränge:

Einerseits eine Gruppe Wissenschafter unter der Führung des alternden Lebemannes Santiago DeBrelt, die eines Tages, nachdem zwei Leichen eines bereits ausgestorben geglaubten Volkes an der Küste der autoritär regierten Metropole Escha angeschwemmt werden, von eben jener Regierung den Auftrag erhalten, die abgelegene tropische Insel Arya aufzusuchen, um dort den Dingen auf den Grund zu gehen. Begleitet werden sie dabei von zwei undurchsichtigen Regierungsagenten („Agent Smith“ [Matrix] lässt grüßen), die offenbar noch andere Ziele verfolgen, als bloß ein Auge auf die Forscher zu haben.

Andererseits begleiten wir eine Gruppe Terroristen unter der Führung der Rumel Jella, die vom Gedanken an Rache besessen ist, nachdem ihre eigene Heimatstadt vor vielen Jahren im Krieg gegen Escha vernichtet wurde und die wenigen Überlebenden seither ein entwürdigendes Leben in Slums fristen müssen. Hilfestellung erhalten sie dabei von den ebenfalls von der Gesellschaft ausgestoßenen „Qe Falta“, gentechnisch geschaffenen Hybridwesen von zum Teil grotesker Form, jedoch durchaus nützlichen Fähigkeiten.
(Was der Autor sich wieder nicht verkneifen konnte ist in diesem Zusammenhang eine einzelne, ganz und gar handlungsirrelevante und sinnbefreite Szene mit Zombie-artigen Vampiren, die wirklich nicht notwendig gewesen wäre... jede andere Art von „Feind“ hätte es auch getan, zumal es mit diesen Vampiren wirklich nichts weiter auf sich hat; sie kommen auch nicht öfter vor und haben zum Glück nicht einmal eine "Sprechrolle"...)

Alles in allem ist „The Reef“ ein Öko-Roman im weitesten Sinne, gespickt mit sozialkritischen Untertönen; eine Allegorie auf die Gier der Menschen, und die sozialen, politischen und ökologischen Missstände unserer eigenen Welt, auf die Gleichgültigkeit mit der wir selbst oft durchs Leben laufen ohne wirklich auf unsere Mitmenschen zu achten.

Leider bleibt trotz zahlreicher origineller Einfälle, grundsätzlich gut ausgearbeiteter Charaktere (die allerdings teilweise ein wenig überzogen erscheinen) und wunderschön beschriebener Kulisse irgendwie die Handlung auf der Strecke.
Selbst jene Stellen, die für Spannung prädestiniert wären (etwa eine Tiefsee-Tauchfahrt mit geradezu Lovecraft’schen Anklängen) wirken seltsam blass und nebensächlich. Gleiches gilt für das Finale, das Newton auf den letzten 6 % des Buches abwürgt.
Trotz der generell ruhigen und actionarmen Erzählweise ist das Buch sicher nicht langweilig, allerdings gehört es für mich auch nicht zu der Kategorie, die man in einem Rutsch durchlesen muss (tatsächlich konnte ich es wochenlang recht gut weglegen, und dazwischen bequem mehrere andere Bücher lesen).

Damit komme ich zur technischen Seite der Kindle Edition.
Ich kann nicht beurteilen, ob es am mangelnden Lektorat liegt, oder an der Übertragung ins e-book Format (da man ja des Öfteren hört, dass die e-book Versionen gerne mit Fehlern bestückt sind, die in der Printversion nicht vorkommen), jedenfalls ist dies das erste e-book, bei dem mir eine solch eklatante Anzahl an fehlenden Buchstaben, fehlenden / doppelten / offensichtlich falsch geschriebenen Wörtern, falsch gesetzten Wortteilungen etc. aufgefallen wäre. An einigen Stellen wirkt es auch so, als hätte sich der Autor nicht zwischen zwei Wörtern entscheiden können, und irrtümlich beide stehen lassen (in der Art wie: „Sie murmelte sagte:....“, wobei ich hiezu kein exaktes Zitat nennen kann).
Zu behaupten, das Buch wäre übersät mit Fehlern, wäre sicher übertrieben (teilweise finden sich mehrere solche Fehler gleich wenige Absätze hintereinander, dann wieder über längere Abschnitte nicht), aber sie ziehen sich doch konstant durch die gesamte Länge.

Warum ich trotz all dieser Kritikpunkte vier Sterne vergebe, ist schlicht dem Umstand geschuldet, dass mir Newtons Schreibstil gefällt, und seine Ideen in meinen Augen eine erfrischende Abwechslung zu dem darstellen, was man derzeit sonst so im Fantasy-Genre findet.

Ich würde „The Reef“ jenen ans Herz legen, die einfach mal was ganz anderes lesen wollen, sofern sie auf großartige Action verzichten können.

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Ants Idea

Not bad…

Reviewed in Australia on January 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed the red sun books and the detail in them hence deciding to read this. Overall an interesting read although it seems many details were left hanging to focus on the island character development. Probably could've had a second book even to explore more.

My main gripe though was the abundance of errors, missing words, duplicate adjectives etc. Quite distracting from the reading experience.

gumstabber

Disappointed!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2012

Verified Purchase

Having read Nights of Villjamur I had high hopes for this novel. Oh, was I going to be let down. After a an explosive start it turns in to a slow read, but I can put up with that. What really caused me to give up on this book (having read 30%) was the constant grammatical, punctuation and spelling mistakes. There appeared to be one on almost every page forcing you to constantly re-read sections to discern what the author was trying to tell you or figure out when one character stopped talking and another began. I hate not finishing books, it seems like such a waste of my time, money and the authors effort but on this occasion it couldn't be helped.

It gets 2 stars rather than one because the world building is inventive and original.

Disappointed!

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