- Title:
- The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality
- By:
- Gahan Hanmer
- Pages:
- 353
- Rating:
- 3
Sometimes it’s funny how fast things can change, and sometimes it’s not…
Welcome to Albert Keane’s beautifully designed medieval kingdom nestled in a completely isolated river valley in the Canadian wilderness. Peaceful, happy, and prosperous, it takes nothing from the modern world, not so much as a single clock.
There is a castle, of course, and a monastery. There is even a pitch dark, rat-infested dungeon – because you simply have to have one if you are trying to rule a feudal kingdom!
Farmers work the land, artisans ply their trades, monks keep school and visit the sick, and nobody (well, almost nobody) misses the modern world at all.
So why has Jack Darcey – actor, wanderer, ex-competitive fencer – been tricked and seduced into paying a visit? And why hasn’t anyone told him that the only way to leave is a perilous trek across hundreds of miles of trackless wilderness without a compass or a map?
Because a tide of fear and violence is rising from the twisted ambitions of one of King Albert’s nobles, and Albert’s fortune teller believes that Jack could turn the tide – if he lives long enough .
This has a lot to offer in so many ways and yet it didn’t quite sweep me away like I wanted it to. Not an author to dismiss, but this effort, though with enough going for it to keep me reading, didn’t hit very well at all.