SPIDER GEM
By Taff Lovesay
Booksurge
When thirteen year old Rhys stays with his Aunt on the Welsh coastline, he looks forward to an action packed time and soon hooks up with an old friend, michael, who still lives locally. Allowed to explore a nearby cave (as long as they take walkie talkies) they discover a strange light and follow an old passage to a cave where a Dwarf is sending vast numbers of spiders through a portal. Disturbing this strange creature they too find themselves sucked through into a strange land, Portalia, along with an American, teenager (Ashley). Their only connection are the pendants that they possess. As they tentatively make friends with centaurs an old evil is awakening in the land.
Rhys has latent magic within him, which at first manifests itself in portal creation whilst asleep, but this is a force that can be harnessed, and there are some teenage crushes to be kept in check. Carefully constructed, but not intrusive, are political struggles within the centaurs, with even a ban on a music.
What role does the auntie of Rhys play? In her attic are many boxes, all decorated with Welsh symbols and scenes, and one even has the fateful cave painted upon it. Interestingly one is padlocked, and doubtless this will feature in a future book, and perhaps we will hear more of Uncle Liam, supposedly lost at sea, but it may be possible he too is somewhere in Portalia. Only time will tell.
There are plenty of battles, first in ambushes by halflings (naughty hobbits?) who will be paid in terms of human women, and there is a massive prolonged pitched battle at a small town. Here Dwarves, elves, men and centaurs fight side by side, but even with these combined forces the battle ebbs and flows. The dwarves, so far are pretty 2D, and little is seen of the elves who turn up late in the book, but do lend a hand in the battle. One intriguing story is of the fire eagles who have been created by long lost wizards and are therefore a finite source. As each night falls they leave their riders and fly to an unknown area in the west. When a rider is killed they instantly take no further part in fighting and fly off, never to be seen again. Then there is the horn of summoning. It hasn't been used in such a long time that it is thought to be just a legend. If it is blown will a Red Dragon heed the call, or are they all dead? Of course the spiders play a role. They have been summoned by the evil wizard to be just one part of his army, alongside creatures formed from lava. The spider gem is the key to control them and they have been siphoned off from a number of worlds.
Intertwined with all this action are tales of the portals and the key stone. Remnants of these are what have summoned the teenagers, but how are they to return to their own plane of existence? There is also the story of a shapeshifter and an exiled human, both who work for the evil wizard.
Lovesay, who is Welsh, manages to write from the viewpoint of teenage boys and at one stage even writes from the viewpoint of Ashley so well that you would think he was American! As the story progresses it takes on more of an adult form and could be said to grow with the protagonists as they mature. I normally don't like fantasy books with a map, but this is one case where it would be very helpful.
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