The Pilgrims

April 20, 2015
Elliott kicks off his Pendulum Trilogy in this less-than-gripping fantasy. Eric Albright, a journalist specializing in overly-emotional reports of lost pets, notices a red door in an underpass, and when his curiosity leads him to force it open, he finds himself in another world, Levaal. Complete with mages and other magical beings, the realm is 500 years past "the War That Tore the World," and the reporter finds himself pitted against its tyrannical ruler. Elliott offers incoherent explanations for basic questions like how Albright is able to communicate with Levaal's residents. Efforts to make Albright sound hip fall flat; his social icebreaker technique of retelling Batman stories is labored. Rapid shifts in tone leave the reader's head spinning: a few pages after a character clowns around with fearsome creatures, there's a grim rape scene. The half-hearted world-building, and dull lead and plot, won't convince many readers to line up for the second volume.

February 15, 2014

Journalist Eric Albright doesn't have a lot going for him in his life, which might explain why, when a door suddenly appears in a train underpass, he ventures to the strange world that appears on the other side. Eric and Case, his homeless friend and underpass dweller, travel to Levaal, a pocket world between worlds, and become dangerously embroiled in the local conflict between a power-mad wannabe god and the free cities that are opposed to him. VERDICT Fast-paced action and vivid descriptions of the magic-wielding creatures help propel this fantasy, the first volume in Elliott's(The Pilo Family Circus) "Pendulum Trilogy," although the characters never quite soar off the page. The portal fantasy always has great potential, giving the reader a fish-out-of-water view of a new imaginative world, but it has been done better by authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Stephen R. Donaldson.

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