I was contacted well over a year ago by Landel Bilbrey, author of Sentinel, City of Destiny, to review his book. It took me a long time to get to it. I began reading, stopped, began again, stopped. He sent me a reminder email a few months ago about posting a review, so I began reading it AGAIN, this time to my sons. I really, really wanted to enjoy this book. We have read The Little Pilgrim’s Progess, and my sons both enjoyed it. I thought this book would be similar in attraction. I have read reviews that others have posted about this book, and for the most part I must say I disagree with them, but let me cover the things I DO like about the book first.

The cover art is very nice. The author was very creative when coming up with creatures, characters, and the names of people, places, and things. The study guide in the back of the book is a great resource for a parent to have directed conversations with their children about the topics covered. Alas, such things do not a well-written story make.

I found the author’s voice to be rather immature. He uses phrases which, while common among children and students and even adults, are not appropriate for use in quality literature. I felt that this book was very much what Charlotte Mason termed “twaddle”, dressed up as an “epic novel”. Some examples:

Chapter 1 begins on page 19 of the book. There is a Scripture verse at the top of the page, rewritten to reflect the story in THIS book:

“Again, he led Paladin to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will serve me’. LOGOS 40:4:8″

Call me legalistic if you want to, but I believe the last page of Revelation addresses this very thing, and it disturbs me that it would be the very first thing he included in the story.

Page 21: “All of a sudden, a loud racket moving rapidly through the underbrush and somewhere beyond the cliff’s dark edge brought Jerol at once to his feet.”
“All of a sudden”? We say that, kids say that, but I was quite shocked to see an AUTHOR say that within the context of a novel! I have a 17 year old son who writes AMAZING sermons, short stories and free form verse. I read this to him and he said it sounded very unprofessional. Even a 17 year old can recognize bad writing.

Page 25: The picture is too scary to even SHOW my 6 and 8 year old sons. The written scene is too graphic to READ to my sons.

Page 26: “When Sin got to within about twenty steps of Jerol, he was suddenly squashed to the ground!”
Again, I expected better writing. Got to within? Squashed?

Beyond these examples, another thing that irritated me was the author’s way of explaining EVERYTHING…. too much explanation on the background of the story. It seemed as if the author thinks the reader isn’t intelligent enough to gather information as it plays out in the storyline, so he explains everything up front. It was information overload. I prefer to read a story that has its history and present intertwined, which makes for more interesting reading.

I am an avid reader and I love good quality literature. I tried, I really tried, to get into this book. I just cannot get beyond these issues. I read the first 3 chapters to my sons, but I had to edit or skip parts that were inappropriate for them. It was also difficult for me to keep the characters straight because so many were introduced. It was difficult to hold my sons’ attention with the story. I couldn’t show them certain pictures, and I couldn’t make the story SOUND any better without taking license and paraphrasing. Sadly, I did not like this book and would not recommend it to anyone.

Disclosure Statement: This review is my own personal opinion, and I do not make a commission on the sale of this product, nor am I am affiliate of the publisher. I received a complimentary copy, for reviewing purposes.