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The Seagull Drovers (Legends Of The Land
book 3) by Steve Cockayne check out website: www.OrbitBooks.co.uk and www.TimeWarnerBooks.co.uk
Ashleigh Brown rebels from her parents and she signs up for the Cat Girls (a law enforcement group in the city). She learns to fight and things go OK until they take the problem of Imp Fever into their own hands and destroy people's signal engines. She feels called to the wandering road and has feelings for a wanderer, Liam Blackwood, whom she and her father meet up with every year. Imp Fever is spreading through the signal network.
It is perhaps caused by a malevolent spirit called Lee that inhabits the network causing unfortunate victims to go mad or exhibit strange behaviour. The darkness is not only confined to the network but seems to be affecting the land as well. If you've read any of Steve Cockayne's previous books you'll know he has an unusual approach to writing and getting the story across. The first book, 'Wanderers And Islanders', consisted of numerous separate stories that only seemed to merge at the end of the book. He keeps each 'story' in separate sections. This was carried through to the second book which was, I would say, more linear than the first. This the third book though harks back to the first. 'The Seagull Drovers' is more akin to the first book and in style reminds me of Quentin Tarentino's 'Pulp Fiction' regarding story telling and non-linear plotting. Cockayne tells events from different points of view. He re-iterates events that happened in the second book but from Ashleigh's point of view. In the second book, 'The Iron Chain', we see these events through Rusty, her father's perspective. This is in effect is a clever way of introducing events that have happened in the first two books to new readers without you really noticing it. He also tells the story using different vehicles such as an old history text looking back at the current events happening in the book. Unlike the first book, though, Cockayne has become more adept at integrating these different sections and characters point of views to blend into a whole. This provides the reader with interest in not only the characters being portrayed but in the mechanism of storytelling. You, the reader, can piece together what is happening from the different sections. The different character's stories add different dimension to the overall story, as they flow and cross from time to time. The book predominately focuses around Ashleigh and Leonardo Pegasus, who will be familiar to readers of the previous books. They are both strongly written characters and propel the book along at a reasonable pace. This is not your usual run of the mill fantasy series. This final book wraps up the different story threads beautifully. Nothing seems forced or overly drawn out. There are no real twists or major crisis until the end, just good story telling in an unusual way. The world he has created could be used for further books, but I will be interested to see what Cockayne writes next. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these books and hope there are many more to come. Phil Jones
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OTHER REVIEWS - June 2004
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King
Matthew has become indisposed and his right-hand advisor, High Master
Fang, has taken control in his place. The land though is deteriorating.
Crops are failing, the royal roads are disintegrating and the seagulls
have left the sea and flocked inland. 
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