By: Gerry Huntman
IFWG Publishing
ISBN: 978-0984329885
Reviewed by: Jim Cherry
Review posted 12/6/2010
Alienation, self-identity, feelings of becoming something greater than you are have become the subjects of young adult novels. In recent years YA has exploded and opened up to explore weightier and more pertinent subjects to teens, such as nascent love and sexual awakening, than previous generation’s Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. These subjects are finding a voice and expression in heroic stories or supernatural novels creating a new mythology for teens.
Gerry Huntman’s Guardian of the Sky Realms is the story of a typical Sydney teen Maree who is an outsider at school and the confines of her homelife are well, confining. Maree craves to be able to become the person she knows is inside. Maree has an affinity for angels. She finds herself unconsciously drawing them. She discovers a painting titled “Wings in Despair” and decides to steal it. When Maree tries to steal the painting she discovers it is a nexus to another world, another world where she was once a guardian of the sky realm named Mirriam. She must discover which of these is her true self while fighting the fear that she may be losing her real self. Alanar, who was once a guardian of the sky realm with Mirriam, becomes her guide to this new world. Alanar must teach her the rules of the world, and accompanies Maree on a quest to save the boy she loves in the human world.
In the author’s note it says Gerry Huntman was active in Australia’s role playing world and you can see it in the writing. Huntman has created a highly imaginative world where hopefully a teen would imagine himself in. Instead of letting the reader discover that world as Maree/Mirriam does, the reader is given the information in a lump sum form where the history and rules are laid out instead of letting the magic of discovery awe the reader as well as Maree.
The main theme that I think Huntman intended the novel to be, finding your identity, seems unfocused. He lets the different elements he uses in the novel, fantasy, heroic adventure, the quest, lead him off on tangents that are fun to read but he they don’t reinforce the theme. For instance, when Alanar takes Maree/Mirriam to Suisa the prophetess, and all the detail in how the future is augured feels like the novel has been abandoned for a role playing game. If these elements were more successfully integrated it would make for a more satisfying novel.
Guardian of the Sky Realms pushes some of the right buttons in wanting to explore the transformation of teens into adult roles, but the fantasy elements, dragons and gargoyles seems like a story a much younger audience would enjoy rather than a teenaged audience.
Jim Cherry is the author of The Last Stage, www.jymsbooks.com
