So this month I will be reviewing the paladin prophecy by Robert frost. All I can say is if you like books with deep complex characters, an interesting easy to follow story, a good pace, believable attitudes and explanations for nearly everything. You will not want to read this book. Let me explain to you what exactly is wrong with this novel.
Summary
Will west(yes that's his real name) is your average teen boy, except for the fact that his life is shrouded in mystery. His parents move him around the country constantly and give him a list of rules to obey in his everyday life, one of the most prominent being not to trust anyone. But when strange men in black caps begin to follow him, his parents start acting strange and monsters seem to be around. Will accepts a dubious scholarship to a mysterious prestigious school he's never heard of. There he meets friends, enemies and has many strange encounters.
Writing Style
The book is written in a third person limited narrative. I must say in the age of multiple pov stytle books it's a relief there is only one central character's mind we follow. I say that because I can't think of anything that would be more insufferable, than having to follow more than one of the bland, cliche, underdeveloped, badly written one note characters in this book. These are some of the most uninteresting characters I've ever seen in literature, flat is an understatement. Our main character is supposed to be this unaware cautious shut in, that's what the characters in the book keep insisting, but he adapts to every situation, e takes plenty of dumb risks and for someone who supposedly never had any friends prior to going to this school he seems decently socially capable. It's odd to me as reader when a character who is supposed to be one way acts another way entirely Plot devices just appear out of nowhere and are given terrible half baked explanations. For example will needs to get airport security at one point even though an alert has been sent out for him, so out of nowhere he's like " oh I've got weird power that lets me put pictures in peoples head so i'm just gonna mess with the guards mind so he can't see my name on the list" no buildup, no warning, just right out of nowhere and if you think it's explained later, well not really.The worst thing about frost's writing is he saves the best for last, but the best is the only interesting thing about this book. Every single boring high school cliche is drawn out to the max, and all the cool fantasy stuff is literally in the last few chapters. He spends the whole book boring you to death and then at the end does something interesting. But you need a lot of patience to get that far. The worst part is the the last part of the book has a cliffhanger that even if you barely pay attention you can gasp what this means for the character. So that's how I was tricked into reading the second book(which is basically the exact same thing in terms of quality and what its problems are).New Vocabulary
Some of the vocabulary needed to get through this snore fest include
never-was- an alternate dimension filled wioth monsters and ancient beings.
Paladin-a holy knight whose origins date back to the court of Charlemagne(8th century king)
Prophecy- the foretelling or prediction of what is to come.
Evaluating Effectiveness
For a fantasy novel this book is pretty unbelievable. I don't ever believe any this could ever happen or would ever make sense in the real world, and this is set in the real world! The main problem is none of this makes any sense. I mean I summarized the generic special school plot because the fantasy is something else. So the villains are monsters, but they're also the original species of earth, but they're not evolutionary predecessors but a different race entirely and they were banished to an alternate dimension by apparently God and will learns all this from his guardian angel who is a dead fighter pilot from New Zealand who is part of a force that fights the ancient beings who are somehow escaping from the alternate dimension and the school bullies might be in on it because of an ancient prophecy that relates to creation of the school... I don't know, this is making Scientology look logical. Point being immersion is terrible because if the average reader can barely understand the story,so there is no possible way to get invested. Also like I said before since the characters are so bland the whole thing just bores you death while you pray for something to happen.
Evaluate Bias
Now bias may have some part in this. I'm of the mindset that if you're writing fantasy you should distance yourself from the real world as much as possible. However this book is very grounded in reality. Also the friends all have this preppy, extroverted attitude to them. Being pretty introverted myself, I may not be understand some of the groups concerns about will's occasional seclusiveness . This book is most definitely pointed at kids our age. Though may have a message of favoring excellence over the average. So if your a fan of the help the lowest rise and more support for average people you might not appreciate this book.
Final Thoughts and rating
So all in all the paladin prophecy is an all around waste of time. It has no compelling characters to keep you invested the story. It's has no interesting plot details to make you want to read to the end and ultimately feels more like a chore than a n enjoyable experience. I can't stress enough how much I cannot recommend this book,it isn't even bad in an entertaining way, just incredibly dull. It's just not worth anyone's time and if weren't for the final chapters there would be nothing positive I could say. I will admit the final battle is kind of awesome and the twist at the end is pretty good. But this isn't enough to make up for the book being so boring. It is for these reasons that the paladin prophecy earns a 2 out of 5.
Elijah Mourillon
Amateur Critic
Disclaimer: I do not own the paladin prophecy by Robert Frost. The use of names and Images is for review purposes
only and not for personal gain.
