Heather
This was a sweet, if very dated story. I was familiar with some of it through an old animated movie which remains a favorite of mine: The Flight of Dragons by Rankin-Bass (1983). It combined two books, streamlining the story and (no pun intended) making it soar. (Also James Earl Jones voices an evil wizard. It's excellent.)
The main characters of Jim and Angie are fairly classic and have a good, if shallow, chemistry. The strengths of the story for me are the creativity of the overall premise, and the consistent surprises for the reader. As with most portal fantasies, having a character who's new to this world allows for things to be explained without having to face walls of text giving exposition.
The group of companions are sometimes clunky in their introductions or interactions, but they're very well defined and feel whole, not like caricatures or cardboard cutouts, which I've found in other fantasy books. I felt a good balance was struck with sharing Jim's internal thoughts, without feeling that the whole book was just philosophy and hypothesis. The climax was excellent, as was the resolution - different than the movie, but so well done that it may be the one area I'd say the book was better. In general, I'm not regretting this read, but I'm still far more likely to recommend the movie than the book.
This was a sweet, if very dated story. I was familiar with some of it through an old animated movie which remains a favorite of mine: The Flight of Dragons by Rankin-Bass (1983). It combined two books, streamlining the story and (no pun intended) making it soar. (Also James Earl Jones voices an evil wizard. It's excellent.)
The main characters of Jim and Angie are fairly classic and have a good, if shallow, chemistry. The strengths of the story for me are the creativity of the overall premise, and the consistent surprises for the reader. As with most portal fantasies, having a character who's new to this world allows for things to be explained without having to face walls of text giving exposition.
The group of companions are sometimes clunky in their introductions or interactions, but they're very well defined and feel whole, not like caricatures or cardboard cutouts, which I've found in other fantasy books. I felt a good balance was struck with sharing Jim's internal thoughts, without feeling that the whole book was just philosophy and hypothesis. The climax was excellent, as was the resolution - different than the movie, but so well done that it may be the one area I'd say the book was better. In general, I'm not regretting this read, but I'm still far more likely to recommend the movie than the book.