JOURNEY OF SEVEN CIRCLES is an intricate, tightly plotted fantasy story. Author Russell Pike’s account of the wizard Kryn Darien’s odyssey covers an enormous amount of ground, but has at its heart the nobility of service and sacrifice for the greater good. It also offers much thoughtful meditation on what such a life looks like when examined up close.
Pike crafts his story in the realms of magical realism here, though taking care to keep examination of the world at arm’s length somewhat. Trappings reminiscent of a bloody twentieth century are referred to regularly—gramophones, radio, and the like—alongside not infrequent medieval imagery, or at least sensibilities one might associate with earlier forms of societal structures. Kryn’s moral code certainly belongs to another age. Having begun life as a “soul warden,” a figure in holy orders tasked with saving lives (not unlike a monk of medieval times), he seeks out those in need of protection as a battlefield medic, only to find his powers of guardianship are insufficient to save his brother from dying. A promise made to him to ensure his soul goes to Paradise forms the backbone of the book, but it doesn’t end there: before long, the stakes are jacked up even higher.
Pike has the same fascination with the trappings of religion—in this case, a religion suffused with wizardry and sorcery—as did Walter M. Miller Jr. Kryn meditates on his responsibilities and the varying interpretations of his holy texts in a way that calls to mind A Canticle for Leibowitz. The world-building here is impressive, too, revealing more than a passing acquaintance with manuscript culture.
On occasion the writing style becomes unnecessarily florid. For instance, “the sense of sanctuary was nigh physical.” Then, just a few pages later, the “ice” in a character’s belly grows claws. As a rule, however, metaphors are left unmixed; and when the prose tends towards the verbose, it is usually with good reason. It takes a certain amount of courage and self-belief for a writer to base so much of the narrative around the mental landscape of the protagonist, but Pike manages it (much to Kryn’s benefit). Though the man is hardly without faults, he is being worn down by duty—and it’s all the more fascinating for it.
A remarkably imaginative flight, Russell Pike’s JOURNEY OF SEVEN CIRCLES bristles with energy and verve in its fantastical story of duty and self-sacrifice.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader