Friday, March 07, 2008

Friday Review - Fearless by Robin Parrish

Regular visitors may recall that Fearless has already been featured on the CSFF Blog Tour, but I hadn't read it back then, so my contribution was a review of book one of the Dominion Trilogy, Relentless, which you can read here.

Fearless continues the story in a world in chaos, with apparently natural disasters happening in LA, Jerusalem, London... you name it. Personally I thought these bits got a bit Left Behind at times, but on the whole the story wasn't in that league (which is agood thing, btw!). Superhero 'Guardian', aka Grant Borrows, and his fellow Loci head to London, via the aforementioned disaster in Jerusalem, where Grant discovers more about his destiny. None of them seem the least bit bothered about why they had to switch bodies, which still bothers me a bit. And while we're talking minor niggles, exactly where is 'downtown London'? And (spoiler alert) how come the psychic barrier extends to the Underground, but allows the Loci to walk across the river bed? The Underground, to best of my knowledge, goes under the river. The author might as well have wrtten 'the Loci made their way through the barrier by locating a big enough plot-hole'.

OK, enough criticising. I enjoyed Relentless when I read it last year, and for the most part, I enjoyed Fearless just as much. The pace is just as fast as in the first volume, thanks in part to the short chapters, and in part due to the fact that this book is even more chock full of action than the previous volume. Cliffhangers lurk around every corner, right up to the final climactic scene.

There's plenty of suspense, a suitably varied cast of superheroes, some of whose back stories are touched on to add a little depth to the proceedings.

As I mentioned when reviewing Relentless, I like my Christian fiction to have a bit more Christianity in it, and so far it has only had passing mentions in this series. I will, however be looking out for Merciless to see how (if?) the Secretum, Loci and associated mythology relate to the Christian faith.

If by some fluke you haven't read any of the Dominion Trilogy books (and especially if you don't live in the UK), go read Relentless now. Fearless might work on its own, but I would recommend starting at the beginning.

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