The Crystalline Crucible by Adam Rowan; Witty and Satirical Treasure Hunt with A Quirky Cast of Seekers

 The Crystalline Crucible by Adam Rowan; Witty and Satirical Treasure Hunt with A Quirky Cast of Seekers

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: The Crystalline Crucible could be considered one of those treasure hunt adventures in the tradition of Cameron Jace’s Anne Anderson and Avanti Centrae’s Van Ops Series. Though instead of going for thrills, it goes for laughs. Instead of the prize being an ancient and valuable object or buried wisdom, it's a few minutes of Internet fame.

Max Jacobs is definitely an odd one. He is an amateur treasure hunter who belongs to various social media groups where members look for hidden prizes. Max’s latest hunt is for the Crystalline Crucible, a prize offered by a mysterious organization that is rumored to be the Illuminati. To help him, Max recruits two acquaintances: Rosie Shaw, his would be girlfriend and Khalil Ahmed, a coworker and rival.

Everything about this book is both odd and strangely adorable in its oddness. The treasure hunt itself has some intriguing clues that require knowledge and accessibility to various English locations. (It’s a good thing England is a somewhat small country so the Crucible hunt can be completed in such record time. One can only imagine how long the hunt would be if it was set in the United States.) Max and Co. find themselves in some pretty uproarious situations to achieve the clues. The book begins as Max breaks into a local museum to receive a clue, only to be arrested and  interrogated, and to later learn that the actual clue was on the museum’s website all along.

The hunt is made even stranger by the hunters themselves. The emphasis on most hunts is wealth and knowledge. There is some potential wealth that could help them. Max wants to provide funding so the local library won’t be shut down. Khalil wants to support his family and get some dangerous gangsters off his back. Rosie wants to travel the world and fulfill a lifelong dream by having her children’s book published. But equally important than the money that they hope to gain is the fame. If they find the Crystalline Crucible the trio will achieve the pinnacle of niche success: the achievement of looking cool among their army of social media treasure hunting nerds. You have to take the victories where you can find them. 

Naturally a strange hobby would feature strange people pursuing it and we are given some weird ones. Max is probably the strangest of the trio. He is obsessed with Medieval history, carries a sword, and speaks in faux Middle English. The treasure hunt gives him a chance to fill out his quixotic fantasies of being a hero on a noble quest. His obsession with certain things like trivia and the Miss Marple series add to his overall quirkiness.

His treasure seeking cohorts are quite colorful themselves. Rosis is a Math teacher and is called to lend her expertise when the clues become numerical and analytical. Rosie’s fascination with trivia is greater than Max’s own to the point that she is the founder and leader of a group called the Quizties who participate in trivia tournaments and she is just as obsessed with that as Max is with finding treasure. Her children’s book consumes her thoughts so much that she sometimes visualizes her friends as anthropomorphic animals. 

Khalil is somewhat of the normal one of the group but he also has his eccentricities. He is a photographer and first encounters Max during a nightly photo session of the local area. Partly because of his history with criminal activity and partly because of his suspicious personality, he is on the lookout for any sort of rivalry, competition, or troubling activity. Even something as innocuous as working in a co-op market causes him to sense conspiracy when he is forced to work with Max and then when Max recruits him to join the hunt. The subplot concerning Khalil’s involvement with gangsters gives a dark perspective to a book that did alright without it but it also emphasizes Khalil’s different status from the rest of his friends. They live in their fantasy world of medieval quests and anthropomorphic animals. He lives in a grittier, more realistic world of a crime thriller. He can’t hide in his imagination like they can. He has to face the violence especially when his friend’s lives are in danger. 

Much of the humor of the Crystalline Crucible lies in the meta commentary. This book knows what genre it is in and what tropes are at play and they acknowledge them even by adhering to and playing with them. When Max and Khalil agree to join forces, Max scoffs that this doesn’t mean that they will become friends bound together by their journey. Of course not even a few chapters later, they admit to becoming friends. When Max receives some disappointing news at the end, he lampshades the “it’s the journey not the destination” cliche right before he gains some enlightenment from his search to show him that yes it was the journey. The meta commentary is both parody in pointing out the tropes and respectful by paying them a touching tribute. 

The Crystalline Crucible is a fun delightful read in which Readers might find that treasure can be found in a good laugh just as well as in a  hidden bejeweled objet d’art.

New Book Alert: The Screaming Skull (The Chronicles of Elberon Vol. 1) by Rick Ferguson; Brilliantly Funny Parody of the Epic Fantasy Genre

New Book Alert: The Screaming Skull (The Chronicles of Elberon Vol. 1) by Rick Ferguson; Brilliantly Funny Parody of the Epic Fantasy Genre

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

If you read a lot of epic fantasies, you could do worse than reading Rick Ferguson's The Chronicles of Elberon. Of course if you were looking to read a serious epic fantasy, you could do a lot better. But if you are in the mood for a parody of the genre which mines the various standard characters and tropes for all their humorous worth, then this is definitely the right choice.

King Elberon, Lord of the Tradewind Isles, Defender of the Faith, President of the Southern Shield, High Admiral of the Seven Fleets, Protector of the Iron Coast, and Friend of the Dolphins is in despair. It is his birthday and he learns from a soothsayer that he will die at age 130 years old sitting on the toilet. Not exactly the heroic going out in a blaze- of-glory-warrior-death that any sword- wielding-Odin-worshipping King and Fighter dreams about but the next news is even worse. Lithaine, an elf and Elberon’s former friend and companion has an army and is heading straight for Elberon to kill him. With regret and remembering that he invited all of his other former companions to the party with the intent to kill them, Elberon decides to document his life.

From the moment that he stole a magical girdle which gave super strength and challenged his warlord father for his independence, Elberon's life has been one adventure after another. Along the way, he meets various allies all of which come from your standard fantasy series and are his True Companions. There is the aforementioned Lithaine, who looks like your typical handsome graceful romantic elf, but has a foul mouth and a sardonic sense of humor. Redulfo, a wizard who absorbed a dark spirit and therefore his status changed from Balanced Good to Disciplined Evil. Amabored, a warrior attached to his sword, Stormcrow and whom Elberon describes as “the most bloodthirsty son of a bitch (he) has ever met.” Malcolm, a paladin Lindar, a half elf, Androgen, a dwarf, and James, a ranger round out the team making the typical crew of humans, elves, wizards, and dwarves that can be found in these works.

Of course Our Heroes have to take on magical quests and face villains that are found in these works everything from dark wizards, to corrupt kings and warlords, to more dragons and monsters than you can wave Wun Wun, the Game of Thrones giant at.

Naturally, the adventurers also find love and with many of his journies, Elberon recalls the many mistresses and lovers that he had along the way. Two are the most important. Melinda, a thief who later becomes head of the Thieve's Guild assists Elberon a number of times before the two become lovers. Another woman in Elberon's adventurous past is Cassiopeia, a nubile warrior cleric priestess who becomes one of Elberon's True Companions as well as his lover. Among Elberon's many many regrets is stringing the two women along at the same time and jeopardizing their lives as well as his love for them and vice versa.

This book is a treat for any Fantasy lovers. It is littered with references that even the newest of fans of the genre will get. Elberon and co. Are constantly worried about gaining or losing Strength, Magic, Healing, or Luck points like players of a certain well known RPG game from the ‘80’s. To further add to the joke, there is a character called Gygax named in honor of Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax. Minor and supporting characters are rich with names like Sir Michael of Moorcock and Sir Jethro of Tull.

One of the more hilarious moments comes when during a dream, Elberon encounters a wise character called Joseph Ki-Rin who informs Elberon that he is taking The Hero's Journey as defined by Joseph Campbell's book, Hero with a Thousand Faces. He calls the various steps that Elberon like meeting the wise mentor-Joseph Ki-Rin-, descend into the underworld, confront his anima, and encountering his feminine side. When Elberon is confused, Joseph Ki-Rin tells him that he is following the step of Refusing the Call.

Ferguson clearly knows his fantasy works by allowing his characters to follow the various fantasy tropes while commenting on them. Elberon asks the Reader point blank if his adventures sound too much like Tolkien. Well he points out Tolkien was the translator of the Red Book of West March and not the author so how could you rip off history and Tolkien mostly cribbed his work from Celtic and Norse mythology anyway.

As for how Elberon, a fantasy character in a Medieval-esque land knows so much about Tolkien and how he can throw phrases like “pre-industrial” around and make references to Star Wars. Well, there is a reason for that and it is one of the cleverest running gags in the book. His world, Woerth is actually one of several alternate universes. He and the other people of Woerth are familiar with the various Earths and have borrowed facets of their history and culture including worshipping various deities. Characters have even been found in the various Earths. One of their dark wizards actually can be found by different familiar names in the other Earths-Voldemort, Saruman, Vladimir Putin-you know all the evil dark wizards.

Despite the humor, there is a sense of melancholy throughout the book that keeps The Chronicles of Elberon from being a series that is just joke after joke. Elberon is a character who knows his better days are behind him. He is like the former-hero-turned-outcast who looks on his glory days once hard as the best days of his life. He also looks back with deep sadness with the mistakes he made particularly with Melinda and Cassiopeia and in despair over the things that he learned and wished that he hadn't like many of his quests were orchestrated by a deeper conspiracy.

Even though he is king with untold wealth and power, and is married and has heirs, Elberon cannot connect with his present life because he is living in the past.

The first book in the Chronicles of Elberon is a brilliant book when it deconstructs the various fantasy elements, but sometimes it runs away with itself. There is no straight linear passage of time. Instead Elberon jumps from one adventure and goes to another one and then back to the present, then to a third adventure before going back to the first one. Several plots mix together so it's hard to tell when any of them take place. Elberon for example may casually mention a character died. Then after several quests involving the character only remember several chapters later to tell us how they died. The Reader has to really pay attention to the timeline (which thankfully Ferguson supplies us with one at the end of the book.)

In a way, the choice in narration makes sense. The book is written as though Elberon is chronicling his adventures to a scribe. So he is telling his story the way most people would when they talk about something that happened in their lives, then back track to an earlier event remembering some important detail that they left out. It could also be mocking the whole en media res storytelling device found in epic tales in which adventures often began in the middle of the action rather than at the chronological beginning. Either way it doesn't make it easy to read and if I were Elberon's scribe, I would throw down my quill in despair wondering how many pages that I have to blot out and redo.

The Chronicles of Elberon is a fun series that makes fun of Fantasy but it is clearly that it is also an homage abs tribute. Rick Ferguson wrote a love letter to the genre, a very silly, satiric and at times confusing love letter, but a love letter nonetheless.