The Stone Mage and the Sea by Sean Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Stone Mage & the Sea (First Book of the Change)
Sean Williams is an Australian writer and I was pleased to see the Australianisms come through in his writing. In fact, it made for a nice change. The setting is clear and feels so real that I would almost be willing to guarantee that the author did his research by sitting in the Australian desert.
What I especially liked about this book was the mixture of modern everyday items in what seemed like a futuristic world touched by magic. Yet, on the other hand, the people in the story seemed backwards in their technology too. I liked the balance. It made me wonder how far we can go, technology wise, before we do something wrong and end up worse off than when we started.
Anyway, the main character is a young boy and the story falls into the “coming of age” category. At a guess, I would say this is a young adult book yet any avid reader will enjoy the storyline. It’s fresh and clean, and in a lot of ways different to other fantasy stories. It’s the first is a trilogy and I felt it nicely setup the world, the characters and the conflicts for the two following books.
I can’t say it was fast paced, but I didn’t find it boring or slow either. However, as the book neared the end, the tension raised and I had no choice but to follow the characters into a climax filled with everything that makes a good book.
This book is highly recommended.
I am already well into the second book in the series – The Sky Warden and the Sun.