Genre: Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About Book One
When everyone has magic except you, being ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Declan Rea shouldn’t matter. He’s powerless in a world of wielders, overlooked at the Academy, and certain he’ll never be enough. But when a fellow cadet named Ayden sees past his lack of magic, when kidnappings start and war threatens, Declan discovers that sometimes being “ungifted” is exactly what the world needs.
Then the kidnappings begin.
Whispers of war echo across the border.
Mysterious forces move in the shadows, and suddenly Declan’s lack of magic becomes the one advantage no one saw coming.
When Declan and Ayden are thrust into a dangerous journey that will test everything they believe about magic, loyalty, and love, they’ll discover that the greatest power isn’t always the loudest. Sometimes it’s the quiet strength of two hearts refusing to break.
The Review
An intense prologue set a millennium in the past sets the stage for Casey Morales’s epic adventure set in an imaginary world. The four Archer novels are focused on the lives of orphaned brothers—Keelan Rea and his little brother Declan.
But that brief description hardly describes it. Declan is in fact the cover figure for the four Archer books—a young Forest Ranger in Melucia with untamed blond hair. It is his destiny that changes the course of history for his country and its neighbor, the Kingdom of Spires. But his big (age-wise and size-wise) brother Keelan, who is a celebrated lieutenant in the national constabulary (i.e. a detective, aided by his magical gift of truth-seeing), is of almost equal importance.
And that’s just the tip of the cast-of-characters iceberg. In “An Archer’s Awakening” we learn that Keelan and Declan were raised by the mages in Saltstone, capital of the Melucian Empire (a commercial empire with no monarch but a highly developed merchant class). In particular, Atikus Dan is a 1000-year-old mage who they see as their father. He is important. Then there’s Ayden Byrne, red-headed son of a merchant nobleman, who joins Declan’s class in the Rangers’ academy. Theirs is a classic hate-at-first sight romance that will thread its way throughout the four volumes of the series.
As for the Kingdom (as it is called), the crucial figures are Crown Princess Jessia Vester, a headstrong teenager and heir apparent. Her father Alfred and mother Isabel struggle with their daughter, who has the odd belief that she should, as heir, have some control over her life choices. Then there’s Danai Thorn, a sort of grand vizier (not that they use that term here), who is at least as old as Atikus Dani. He is pulling 1000-year-old strings unbeknownst to anyone in the royal family. This book is where we get to know more about the main characters and get a sense (aided by very useful maps) of the story’s setting.
You see, the Kingdom of Spires and Melucia have been peaceful trading partners for 1000 years. That is about to change as book 2, “An Archer’s Destiny” kicks off. Storm clouds are gathering on the horizon as Thorn’s long con—using Queen Isabel as his unwitting accomplice—begins to unfold. At the same moment, Declan Rea, who is beginning his pas-de-deux with Ayden Byrne, discovers something about himself that turns his world upside down. Declan has always been conscious that, in this nation of magical people, he is one of the minority who have been given no gift (i.e. no magic). He takes comfort that the aristocratic Ayden is, like him, ungifted.
By book 3, “An Archer’s Reckoning,” things get really ugly. Declan takes his place at the center of the narrative, but so does Queen Isabel, still unaware that she is being used as a pawn in a violent and deadly game. I note here that all of this sort of fiction derives, ultimately, from “The Lord of the Rings,” and by extrapolation from “Star Wars.” This is “The Empire Strikes Back,” if you will. This is the dark before the dawn. Princess Jessia ends up in the protection of Keelan Rea and Atikus Dani, the mage who raised him. I found this book distressing to read, and it left me almost desperate for something positive. Of course, that pretty much guaranteed that I’d start reading book 4 immediately.
In book 4, “An Archer’s Redemption,” as the title suggests, the tide begins to turn. There is more violence, and some shocking surprises, but the power of the good magic, with Declan at the center of things, begins to offer us some hopeful light.
Casey Morales is no J.R.R. Tolkien; but he is nonetheless a strong, compelling writer, who knows how to stir action into a heart-stopping wave. He does not have the kind of beautiful language that would have pushed the book to five stars, and he also resorts to the genre’s requirement for on-page sex, which I found to be a distraction rather than a bonus. I am rooting for Ayden and Declan, truly; but I would have been happy to let their physical relationship blossom in my imagination.
All in all, a powerful, emotional, and worthwhile series. There are two other prequel type volumes, but these four are the essential pieces in visiting this fantasy world. I read them all at once. It was a good choice.
4 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.