The Eyes of God by John Marco

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The Eyes of God by John Marco

Pub: Gollancz. 788 page paperback. Price: Ł12.99(UK). ISBN: 0575073640.

Check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk

Akeela the Good rules over the previously warlike Liira. He wishes to make peace with Recc and goes on an envoy with the Royal Chargers, Lukien and Trager.

The Eyes of God by John Marco The King of Recc offers Casaandra, his daughter, to Akeela and he falls deeply in love - as does Lukien. She is dying of cancer and Lukien steals the Eye of God from the Jadori and sets in motion a tragic chain of events.

This sounds like a good fast-paced fantasy story and it is true that all the elements are here: adventure, romance, mysticism and tragedy. But it is like someone trying to make bread without yeast - it just doesn't rise. I never engaged with any of the characters.

I found that their fatal flaws, necessary for the story to progress, made them unlikeable. Akeela, for instance, who turned mad by the betrayals around him was weak and stubborn even before circumstances corrupted him. Cassandra with her selfish behaviour annoyed me so much that I couldn't understand why anybody would love her, let alone heroes or kings.

Fantasy writing is littered with clichés and it takes a skilled writer to use them to great effect - however in this story they pop up and detect from the reading of the story.

The fair king and his retainer who rankles at always being second, the character with the physical handicap that eventually becomes valued and the character who has sinned but gains redemption. They are all here and there are few variants on this clichés - John Marco tries to get out of one clichés by twisting neatly into another one.

However, this problem could only be a miner niggling one if the novel provided insight into the world that we are living in. I am not sure if that was what John Marco was attempting. I thought that I caught parallels with the First World War and nuclear weapons.

Was this a commentary on the 20th century or was I searching for some deeper meaning to larch onto? Even at the end of the novel I was unsure of what, if anything, he was trying to say.

So this novel has bad characterisation and there is no clear deeper meaning to the novel but this is not the worst book I have ever read and if you like a standard fantasy novel to read then you could do worse than this one.

However, I believe that there are somethings that life is too short for and like stuffing mushrooms, reading this book is one of them.

Katie McGivern

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