CSFF July Blog Tour – Starlighter - Day 2

Today I’m going to post my review of Starlighter.

I’ve read all of Dragons in our Midst and Oracles of Fire series, as well as Beyond the Reflection’s Edge and roughly half of Eternity’s Edge, so I come into this knowing Bryan’s work very well. Suffice to say, unlike someone who would be reading one of his works for the first time, I was more attuned to common themes and ideas that he has used before. I have to say, on that level, Bryan’s work was not very derivative. It wasn’t a clone of his previous works, but you could tell it was a “Bryan Davis” work. (Heh, heh, I wonder if we writers should want to be so branded like that. I can only wonder what someone would think of one of my stories) The heroes are young and brave, and the heroines are spunky, but not in a way that duplicates characters from his earlier works. Many of the characters are unique and have some eccentricities that make them interesting, particularly Tibber and Elyssa.

Anyway, the story opens with a young soldier named Jason fighting an opponent in sword to sword combat.

Already I love this story.

As it turns out, Jason Masters is a resident of a planet called Major Four (dragons call it Darksphere) who is promoted to the job of guarding a powerful governor…who is promptly killed and Jason is made a patsy for the murder and flees.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

The other plotline involves a planet called Starlight, where a girl named Koren is found to have the powers of a Starlighter. (I won’t give away what it is, it’s actually very cool and I wouldn’t want to spoil those scenes) This leads her to a mysterious black egg, which houses the dragon prince inside. The prince is the subject of a prophecy, whose emergence could spell good or ill.

Of great interest in this tale is that the humans on both planets are grappling with competing beliefs about the human race and dragons. Jason, as well as his brother believe that a group of humans-called the Lost Ones-was kidnapped from their world long ago by dragons and that their descendants might still be alive, but the prevailing authorities on their planet frown on such talk to the point of imprisonment. On Starlight, the dragons tell the human slaves that they are natives of that world, while a few humans believe in a world where their home race originated from. On both planets, voicing beliefs contrary to the ones held by the majority will probably get you imprisoned or killed. I like this element of the story because it makes the characters more pro-active. They don’t have a wizened elder to tell them what to do, and they don’t have a prophet-type to give them instructions. For those who are fans of the Dragons in our Midst/Oracles of Fire books, the characters typically were confronted by enigmatic poems given by prophets like Merlin or Enoch-or were given instructions by them directly. Over time, as the hero characters aligned themselves completely with God, there was no doubt they seek to follow the prophecies or instructions as best they could. The tension was in how they interpreted the words and whether their actions would succeed. While that tension worked well even in the later stories, I think there’s still a limitation to the heroes’ actions in that they’re following a blueprint to resolve the crisis they’re in, and aren’t going to monkey around with it very much.* In this story, the characters don’t have that guidance. They’re acting more on general faith and their own principles, and those actions will have enormous consequences not only for themselves, but for perhaps the fate of two worlds. I liked that. I also liked that even though I could guess at what was true, the narrative didn’t quite make that clear. I’m sure there is still more to the story of these two worlds than what we’ve learned.

*(Again, I’d stress Bryan still makes them interesting because he writes them out in the form of poems that are beautiful to read and enigmatic enough to keep you guessing. A lot of prophecies in fantasy works tend to be as flat as saying someone will be the chosen one to fight evil, and then his great power comes on like flipping a light switch. How dramatic…)

Earlier, I semi-jokingly called this a “Bryan Davis” work. I say that because in addition to the fantastical settings and youthful characters, we also get scenes where moral or spiritual issues are pondered and explored. In this case, such scenes are found when Koren is debating issues of love with the dragon prince, who can communicate telepathically with her. The prince asserts that Koren has no ability to love him on her own, that she must force herself to love him, to become his servant in a manner more befitting a slave. He initially sounds very Messianic, but it becomes evident to Koren that something is wrong here, and his rhetoric that her love can only be coerced from her only serves to repulse her. I’m not entirely sure where this line of debate will go, as it seems unresolved in this story. It’s an interesting but unresolved layer in this saga; I’d like to see how it plays out in future sequels.

Overall, I liked the book. I thought it was a well-rounded, well-paced tale without any rough edges and a fresh universe to work from. Nothing struck me as false or out of place. It’s a book I think would be ideal for the junior high set and up. I noticed that some readers didn’t like the cliffhanger ending, but personally I don’t think it was that abrupt, and the closure for the tale was adequate.

Next time: More thoughts on Starlighter!

Blog tour links for your convenience:

Brandon Barr
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
R. L. Copple
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Andrea Graham
Tori Greene
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Leighton
Jane Maritz
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Donita K. Paul
Crista Richey
SarahFlan
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson
KM Wilsher
Jason Waguespack