Maps

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

In this fantasy-adventure story, a group of long-time friends are
summoned together by one of their number, the halfling swordsman, Chip,
to follow a map. It is assumed that the map leads to a treasure,
although there is no way of knowing because it is written in a cryptic
faery language. Chip strikes a deal with a demon who knows the ancient
tongue and the troupe is off, complaining about the weather and killing
just about every creature they encounter.

Though the group has a goal they frequently get distracted, resulting
in no real plot or character development. Though there is a portal
between the world of the novel and a realistic world (one halfling wears
Levi’s and Garadun the sorcerer was a graduate student), the link is
rarely more than alluded to until the companions leap through a portal
at the end of the book. Chip’s cousin Red is rude and irritable for
most of the novel and reveals to his cousin that he’s been diagnosed
with terminal cancer mere pages before sacrificing himself to an
oncoming hoard of undead.

The quality of the writing is poor. The plot is weak and lacks both
logic and flow. The author’s characters are flat. The dialogue is
clichéd and seems to serve the primary purpose of filling pages between
scenes of gratuitous violence or sex (both hetero and lesbian, replete
with toys).

The novel’s presentation would seem to indicate a classic quest
fantasy along the lines of The Lord of the Rings, or a parody of the
same. Morrow’s inclusion of quotations from Tolkien as well as pop
culture sources such as Japanese anime, comics, and television seems to
indicate that he may be trying to aspire to the same level of quality
and popular success. Unfortunately, he falls short of his models.

Morrow confesses to being a long-time fantasy role player and game
master, and that may be the only audience this book was intended for.
Even then, it reads like a gaming session based on the random generation
tables found in the original D&D Game Master’s Guide.