Categories: Seal of Excellence Recipients, YA Fantasy, Young Adult
Series: Mystical Mountain Magic
Author: Guy Brooke
An infant girl is rescued and raised by giant eagles and is commissioned by a living volcano to restore Hope back into the world before the Deceiver can assassinate her.
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Reviewed by Awesome Indies’ Assessor
February 12, 2015
Imaginative and allegorical
This sequel to “Deceiver” carries us on a new path with Erickson the now vagrant ex-pirate. The living stone he tried to steal took his sanity and left him with nothing but booze to ease the maddening reality of his own evil. From the town of Pandemonium he becomes caught up unwillingly in the schemes of Razor, a truly evil man and servant of the Minstrel. Awake and fully manifested, the Minstrel now aims to attack the living mountain, Misty, and kill Hope. Razor plays an important role in her attack. On a trail of death and brutality, Erickson follows Razor toward Elysium and up the forbidden face of Misty. Can Mariah save Hope from the Minstrel, Razor, and all the forces the Minstrel has amassed? Will the natives nearby survive the battle? Will Erickson succumb to the evil inside him or rise above and embrace redemption?
I loved how this new approach embraced the character of Erickson. His terrible crimes and fantastic defeat in Deceiver fit the ending of the typical villain, but this book followed him after in a compassionate and truthful look at the vanquished monster. Without excusing any of his evils, Guy showed us Erickson’s broken, twisted heart and the wreck he became once his transgressions led him to utter defeat. I didn’t know what would happen or where Erickson’s journey could lead. The path he took and the changes it made in him captivated my interest and my sympathy.
The previous main characters had only a supporting role, more toward the end of the story this time, but their journey was no less fantastic. Guy surprised me more with how the story would unfold and what the characters would have to face. I began to see the allegory of it more toward the end and understand a bit of what the story represented.
Occasionally, I felt, the plot did wander a bit and lose focus, though not for too long. The light bouncing between characters contributed to my difficulty anticipating where the story meant to go. The ending meandered a bit more than I like, but offered a lot of wrap-up for all the characters.
Redeemer takes an imaginative and allegorical path through a fantastic world of talking beasts, black-hearted villains, destruction, and redemption. I felt both reluctant and satisfied at the end of this fantastic story of the Mountain of Misty.