Venom and Song - CSFF Blog Tour Day One - Or, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider King

Venom? This book is about Spider-Man’s dark-suited alien-symboite possessed arch-nemesis?

No, actually it’s the sequel to Wayne Batson and Christopher Hopper’s fantasy Curse of the Spider King.

Spider King? Is that one of Spider-Man’s allies?

*Editor hits desk with ruler* Enough of the Spider-Man jokes!

Okay, okay. Sheesh!

Anyway, for the uninitiated, the Spider King is the titular nemesis of the The Berinfell Prophecies Series. He seeks to conquer the world of Allyra, and more specifically conquer the race of elves that have since fled to the underground of their world. To protect the heirs to the seven elven lords, they were taken to Earth as babies. When they all became thirteen, their special gifts began to manifest themselves (ability to make fire, super speed like the Flash, etc). Unfortunately, the Spider-King’s forces located them as well, and last we saw, the teens had to skedaddle to Allyra.

That’s where Venom and Song opens.

I previously gave Curse of the Spider-King a positive review here. Some readers were put off by the large cast of protagonists-seven in all-and the time it took to get there. Personally, I thought the story was good, in that it did just what it set out to do. It vacillated between moments of high fantasy, slice of life drama and comedy, creepy scenes involving monsters, and at the end, a great action sequence. Also, Wayne and Christopher have a good feel for creating young protagonists, probably more so than in almost any Christian fantasy series I’ve read to date. I’ll comment more on that as the tour rolls on, but I think for Venom and Song they were just as good, if not better, with the young characters.

My initial impressions with Venom and Song are very favorable. While COTSK jumped from teenager to teenager, when it wasn’t going into the Allyra flashbacks, VAS is much tighter. It focuses primarily on the seven teenagers and rarely leaves them except to cut to the Spider King, the other elves, etc, primarily characters we already know. Also, since the seven are finally together, we get to see how these different kids get along-or in some cases-not. I’ll comment more on that later on.

And as aside, I loved that one of the teens suggests going back to Earth and getting modern day guns and ammunition to fight the Spider King. So many of these fantasy worlds are only at a medieval level of technical development, so swords and arrows are typically your only bet. Of course, if you could manage to bring some sweet firearms with you, you might have a leg up on things. Of course, the kids are told that inorganic material cannot pass through the portals, so the idea of an 80s action movie montage where the elves enter an armory and stock up on machine guns is nipped in the bud. Wait a sec, did the Allyrans subcontract their portals out to Skynet?

Next time, more of my thoughts on Spider-Man…I mean, Venom and Song! Check the links below. Um…gotta run!

*Author runs as editor gives chase with two by four*


* Venom and Song - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400315069 (or an alternate link of your choice)
Authors’ blogs
Wayne Thomas Batson – http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/
Christopher Hopper – http://www.christopherhopper.com/blog/


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