Dark River

What I'm Reading--

The Traveler and the Dark River are book one and two of the Fourth Realm Trilogy. The third book has yet to be released. They follow the adventures of twin brothers, Gabriel and Michael Corrigan, who have the potential to astrally project themselves between "realms" and their bodyguards called harlequins whose job it is to protect them from a group called the tabula who plans to control the world by gathering information via internet, surveillance cameras, credit and debit card transactions, etc. and then utilize that information to control events and people.

The premise of these books is that somehow these travelers by going to other realms are able to gain information and insight that change the world and this is a danger to the Tabula and so they want the Travelers destroyed.

At first I thought the prose a bit stiff and terse, but the storytelling and pacing have overcome this stylistic reservation on my part--and it seems that as the second book progressed that the wording became richer and more fleshed out, and there are some very evocative passages.

The books tap into the Big Brother paranoia of always being watched and therefore controlled by The Vast Machine. In an era where our every purchase can be tracked, our cars have OnStar systems that have Global Positioning Units aboard and that can be shut down via satellite, and police monitor surveillance cameras at the SuperBowl with facial recognition software to look for wanted criminals this paranoia resonates with a truth and believability that gives this story its backbone.

When reading the first book I couldn't help but notice that the name of the twin travelers' father, Matthew Corrigan, is the same as the hero in Michael Franzoni's Missing Persons novel which was published by Frontier Press. As the story continues one of the characters has a cat named Garvey--the name of the hero of my Dire Planet novels which was also originally published by Frontier Press and is now available at Amazon.com. This made me wonder if John Twelve Hawks--the pseudonym of the author-- was familiar with the stories at Frontier and was tipping his hat. On the other hand it could merely be coincidence. Twelve Hawks kills off Garvey shortly after introducing him...

Despite the demise of Garvey, I highly recommend these books. Both are great reads and highly entertaining.