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Title: The White Tree
Series:
Cycle of Arawn #1
Author: Edward Robertson
Rating:
2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages:
432
Words: 190K
From
Cycle-of-arawn.fandom.com
Dante
Galand is a teenager living in the nation of Mallon, not far from the
capital of Bressel. One day, while exploring the woods around the
village where he grew up, he stumbles upon a ruined temple of Arawn,
god of death and the power of the nether, summarily banned in Mallon
on religious grounds. In the temple he finds a copy of the Cycle of
Arawn, the holy book of Arawn's followers. The temple is guarded.
Dante kills the guard, takes the book, and heads to Bressel to
research.
In
Bressel, he hires Blays Buckler, an armsman of the same age as Dante,
to watch his back while he studies, fearful of the other Arawnites
who continue to hunt him and the Cycle. During a fight with the
pursuing Arawnites in an alley, Dante subconsciously summons a
shadowsphere, a basic trick of the nether. He and Blays flee Bressel
and spend the next couple weeks camped by a pond in the woods outside
Bressel before the Arawnites catch up and they move on. They make
their way to the small city of Whetton, where they face down and kill
another pair of Arawnite hunters, one of them a nethermancer. The
next day, Blays is arrested by the guards of Whetton for the
killings. Dante escapes by chance, having not been in their room at
the time.
Unwilling
to leave Blays to the gallows, Dante holes up in a mausoleum in the
local graveyard where he meets an old man named Cally, who tells him
about the Arawnites' scheme to use the Cycle as bait for new
nethermancers and begins to teach Dante how to use the nether,
starting with the use of your own blood to amplify the nether's
power. Dante spends a good deal of the week reading the Cycle-
particularly the story of Jack Hand- and contemplating ducks. On the
day Blays is due to be hanged, Dante attacks the guards, causing a
very large mess and saving Blays. As they ride away on stolen horses,
Dante passes out after exhausting his control of the nether.
He
wakes up in a temple Cally has been living in, and spends several
days recovering and reading the Cycle- the part of it written in
Mallish, at least. Cally eventually tells Dante, Blays, and the other
two men rescued from Whetton that they'll have to leave soon. He
recommends heading north, to the Dead City, Narashtovik. It's where
Dante will be able to find teachers and knowledge about both the
nether and the final third of the Cycle, which is written in Gaskan.
It's also the source of a string of recent attacks and general unrest
centered in Bressel and Collen. Cally suggests that if Blays and
Dante are able to work their way into the city and kill Samarand, the
current High Priestess of Arawn and ruler of Narashtovik, they will
be able to avert a religious war directed at Mallon in the name of
Arawn, who they plan to release from his godly prison.
Dante
and Blays leave Cally's temple with Robert Hobble, one of the other
men from Whetton. They're attacked on the road by half a dozen
Arawnites led by Will Palomar. They drive their attackers off, but
Robert is badly injured. Dante heals Robert as best he can, and they
continue on. They stop in the town of Shay, where they meet Gabe, a
norren monk of Mennok and an old friend of Cally's. While at Gabe's
monastery, the town is caught up in the Unlocking, wherein all of the
undercover Arawnites hidden in the Mallish temples of other gods
revealed themselves and attacked the others. After a fight for the
temple, Gabe sends the three of them on their way. They cross the
Norren Territories without incident and make it the rest of the way
to Narashtovik unmolested. Robert leaves them just outside the city
and they continue alone.
After
a few days of research and resupplying in Narashtovik, Dante presents
himself at the Cathedral of Ivars with a copy of the Cycle. It's not
the one he found in Mallon, the true original copy, but one of
passably similar age found in a ruined building in Narashtovik
itself. He and Blays walk right into the cathedral and all but throw
the book at the first priest they find, which happens to be Nak
Randal. Dante demands a place in the Arawnite order and a teacher.
Larrimore, Samarand's Hand, is summoned to deal with them. They are
eventually granted a place inside the walls of the Sealed Citadel.
Dante spends his time learning Gaskan with Nak and Blays spends his
time training with the Citadel's soldiers. After a brief stint in the
dungeons over the issue of the non-original Cycle, a fact since
discovered by the priests, Dante gets a minor promotion and Larrimore
begins to send him and Blays on errands in the city like rounding up
petty criminals with minor nethereal talents.
In
time, Dante is set to creating reservoirs of nether by infusing old
bones with the power and writing on them in blood. It also comes to
light that Samarand was once a priest on the Council of Narashtovik
under Cally. She spearheaded the effort to have him removed as the
High Priest on the basis of advancing age. When Cally was finally
forced out fifteen years before the start of the book, she took over
the position. A week before the Council is set to leave to free
Arawn, an assassin nearly kills Dante in the middle of the night,
sent by Cally on suspicion that Dante had given up on the plan to
kill Samarand. He and Blays hide the body in a haystack outside, and
within a week they're riding out of the city with Samarand,
Larrimore, half the Council, and a large escort of soldiers and
priests for Barden, the White Tree. They're attacked by local rebels,
displeased with Samarand's war, partway to Barden and defeat them.
Under
Barden, Samarand and the six Council priests set to a massive,
draining ritual to unleash Arawn. Dante and Blays wait, biding their
time until they can strike. The ritual is nearly complete when the
priests realize something isn't right. Dante steps forward with the
true original Cycle and all hell breaks loose. Cally reveals himself,
having been disguised as Jackson, one of the Council priests, for
some time. He immediately goes into battle with Samarand while Dante
and Blays turn on the rest of the priests and soldiers. One of the
other Council priests, Baxter, turns on the rest of the Council,
though he's quickly killed by Larrimore, who arrives from the bottom
of the hill and demands answers. During the fighting, Dante knocks a
limb free from the great bone tree. It's conveniently sword-shaped,
and he takes it. In the end, the battle comes down Cally against
Samarand and Dante against Larrimore. When Samarand and Larrimore
both lie dead, along with the rest of the Council priests present,
Cally speaks to the gathered soldiers and assumes command. On their
return to Narashtovik, he tells the remnants of the Council what
happened under Barden. Olivander, next in line for the seat of High
Priest, nearly came to blows with Cally over his hand in Samarand's
death, but in the end let it go in the name of rebuilding the
decimated Council. Dante demanded a seat, and Cally supported it,
making Dante by far the youngest Councilman at sixteen.
After
a couple months of learning the city and his place in it and of
generally relaxing, Dante talks with Blays. Spring is coming and
Blays is restless, and means to leave. Dante decides to go with him.
He gets nominal approval from Cally to make the two of them official
delegates to Bressel, though they intend to do whatever they wish and
Cally knows it. Cally tells Dante to consider how Narashtovik might
help the cause of norren independence- he had apparently promised
Gabe that he would fight for it, in exchange for help reclaiming his
seat at the head of the Council. Dante and Blays leave Narashtovik
and head south. They stop in Whetton and visit Robert Hobble before
continuing on to Bressel.
If you've ever read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain
Chronicles, or are even a bit familiar with Welsh
mythology, the name Arawn should be familiar to you. He is a death
god and as such is considered to be a pretty bad guy. Robertson
either digs deeper into Welsh Lore than I care to, or just does
whatever the feth he feels like and makes Arawn the great god who
helped humankind and was locked away because of it. Not going to get
any sympathy from me. Death is evil and at some point will be
destroyed, thank God.
 |
| Do you really want to free this guy? |
Anyway, this had potential. But that was it. It was overlong, over
written, confusing at times and odd word choices that removed me from
the flow of the narrative were used. The most egregrious was the word
“smited”. I can't find that word in the Merriam-Webster
dictionary. I have a feeling the writer used the rules of the english
language and created that word based on that instead of looking up
the proper form, which would been “smitten”. If any of you can
find the word “smited”, please let me know.
The story contained should have been no more than 250 pages. Lots of
extraneous detail (probably put in for “world building (heaven save
us from that filthy thing)), little side journeys or happenings that
didn't advance the plot but fluffed the page count, it all just added
up to one big Bloviated book.
Then you have the character of Dante. He's this 16 year old who saw
some guy heal a dog way back when and so decided to become a disciple
of Arawn (or at least read the religious book of Arawn) to become
what is in essence a wizard. How does he do that? He reads the book
and his innate ability allows him to. There were a couple of times
where he uses what is a huge burst of magic to push people back and I
had to wonder why he didn't use a much smaller amount to twirl a
sword through the air and kill people. Nothing says “cool magic”
like a flying sword. While the magic system wasn't layed out for us
the reader, that didn't bother me. What bothered me was that Dante
didn't try to figure them out for himself. Or if he did, it was lost
in all the wordiness and lost.
Finally, why did Dante interrupt the ritual near the end to prevent
the return of Arawn? If he's such an upstanding god who just wants to
be buddy buddy's with humanity, and whose religious book can empower
people, why? The reason given is that then the acolytes of Arawn
would go off to war. But don't you think Arawn himself might have
something to say about that? If they bring him back, he's not going
just be a puppet for them to use.
By the end of this book I was ready for it to be done and I had zero
interest in the rest of the trilogy. Robertson isn't a good enough
author to cut down his own work, so I'm not going to waste my time on
any more of his books.
★★✬☆☆
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