SHADOWMANCER
G. P. Taylor
Putnam
Fantasy
ISBN: 0399242562
304 pages

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In the 1700s, evil stirs in the village of Baytown, on the Yorkshire coast. Vicar Demurral has stolen a powerful religious relic called the Keruvim. When he attains the second Keruvim, Demurral will be omnipotent and able to become the supreme being of all creation. To that end, with the power of the first Keruvim, he conjures a tremendous storm, which wrecks a ship carrying the second sacred object. The other Keruvim, however, eludes him.

Thomas, a near orphan, is saved from drowning by Raphah, an African teenager surviving the shipwreck. Raphah recruits Thomas to help steal back the Keruvim, stolen from Raphah's people. Thomas hates the despicable vicar and is determined to help Raphah wrest from the vicar the power obtained through thievery. His friend, Kate, helps the two boys enter the vicarage through a tunnel. Thomas escapes from the vicar, but he and Kate run headlong into a gruesome battle with giant evil warriors called Varrigal. The two cannot even hope to win the fight against these horrific supernatural creatures. Yet somehow they triumph.

Meanwhile, Raphah is imprisoned by Demurral, branded as his slave, and sent to the shale mine. Thomas and Kate are offered a chance to help their friend, who is said to be otherwise "as good as dead." But are they walking into their own deaths? The ultimate fate of the earth and all its beings rests in the hands of Kate, Thomas and Raphah. Can they save earth and heaven from being lost forever to evil?

SHADOWMANCER is an exciting adventure with unforeseen plot twists and terrifying shocks, filled with blackest despair and joyous triumph. G. P. Taylor weaves a fine tapestry of earthly and spiritual battles, complete with characters and references seemingly biblical in nature (although ambiguous enough to possibly represent faiths other than Christianity).

SHADOWMANCER has been billed as "hotter than Potter"; its scope is much more epic, faith-based and disturbing than the Harry Potter novels. Fantasy readers who can handle significant religious symbolism threaded through a "can't put it down" adventure will welcome this first book of a planned trilogy as a future classic.

   --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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