Book Review: In the Halls of Eternal Music, by Denton Salle

Espionage and dark magic in the hall of the Dwarves

[In some cases, we here at upstream reviews get reviews on the condition that we have reviews written in a timely fashion. This puts our hiatus on, well, hiatus. Today, we have another in a series we’ve already started. If you haven’t looked them before, we have a few links kicking around.]

In the beginning, The Avatar Wizard series started as a cute YA novel with a protagonist who turns into a panda. At the end of book one, it was revealed to be a world of fantasy intrigue and espionage, with metric tons of righteous destruction of evil. From there, the series has escalated into a full-scale war against the forces of The Dark, with book 4 ending in a cavalry charge that would have made Edgar Rice Burroughs or Tolkien happy.

In the Hall of Eternal Music, our hero Jeremy gets to learn how much diplomacy really can be warfare by other means.

The Story

Poor Jeremy. Despite having survived spies and assassins, and at least one all-out battle, his life never gets easier. This time, a simple mission to increase commercial traffic turns into another life or death battle.

Jeremy his girlfriend Galina and his best friend Bolgar have traveled to Bolgar’s homeland, where his father rules the dwarven kingdom. But they don’t even get a chance to say hello before they’re being shot at with crossbows.

Agents of the dark are again rising, but this time they’re inside the dwarven mountain. They’ve already tried to assassinate Bolgar’s father, and now that Jeremy has arrived, there’s a new target on the firing line. But this time, Jeremy can’t punch his way out of this one. He’ll literally have to go through Hell and back.

It has been interesting watching the Avatar Wizard series evolve from a magic school series to something that gives Narnia, Barsoom and Middle Earth a run for their money.

And, just for fun, Jeremy gets to fight Elric … or at least his sword.

The Characters

While the focus is again mainly on Jeremy, the perspective widens a bit to Galina’s point of view as well. While all the characters are deftly handled, with some solid character moments and humor, character takes a back seat to the world building in this one… until it takes a back seat to the action, and then everything gets wild and woolly.

The World

This world building is more of the Alice in Wonderland school. Jeremy is thrust into another new culture, and has to be walked through it in order to find a solution to a mystery that’s subsumed in the local culture. Frankly, having a mystery in your fantasy is a great way for worldbuilding.

Politics

The only politics here is “evil exists, and it must be destroyed.” That’s it.

Content Warning

Think of Lord of the Rings-level combat with swords. I think the TV ratings call it “fantasy violence.” In battles with swords and axes, people lose body parts. There is no focus on gore, but this is as clinical as this sort of warfare can be.

Also, there seems to be more of a focus on Masonic nonsense in this one that I don’t recall being present in previous novels—there is talk of lodges, and secret symbols, the Solomonic lines of Sheba, and other oddities that nearly jarred me out of the narrative. So if that’s a problem, you’ve been warned.

Who is it for?

Take the YA fantasy of Narnia, the action of a Barsoom or a Lord of the Rings, with humor just dark enough that makes you wonder just how much Jeremy and the others have seen.

Why buy it?

It’s fantasy YA that unambiguously identifies evil, and promptly bashes its head in. What’s not to like?