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The Changeling Saga #1
The Changeling War
In the first volume in the Changeling Saga, two violent worlds are about to meet as the Changeling--a sixteen-year-old Earth boy unaware of his otherworldly origins--sets off to fight a war that could change the future course of his homeland forever. Original.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1999
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About the author
Peter Garrison
4 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Peter Garrison is a nom de plume of Craig Shaw Gardner
Peter Garrison is a nom de plume of Craig Shaw Gardner
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 2, 2013
Wow, I just don’t know what to make of _The Changeling War_. I read the reviews here and on other places online and was somewhat mystified as to why some gave such glowing reviews to this novel. The book had a good premise I thought but had many, many problems. I don’t like to ever bash a book (or any author), not ever, as I admire the effort, time, and skill it takes to complete a novel and then to get it published, but I have to call it like I see it so to speak.
The setting is a classic one in modern fantasy, one in which our world (in this case around the year 2000) is for the most part blissfully unaware that one (or two?) more fantasy worlds exists beyond our own, a world (or worlds) that feature European medieval or pseudo-medieval settings with magic and non-human sentient races. There is some travel between the worlds but only a very few can accomplish it. Various characters, characters with very little powers of their own (as far as they know) both on one of the fantasy worlds and on our world of Earth have Big Destinies ahead of them but the evil powers that be are aware of this before our heroes are and are taking steps to make sure those destinies are never fulfilled. At the same time there are those who wish the heroes success (and continued life) and are working to aid them while and when they can. Some are willing, witting allies, others are thrown in by circumstances. Much of the point of view is from characters who know little of either the setting as a whole or what the Big Plan is.
Sounds not bad right? Actually sounds pretty good but the execution is where the problems arise. Where to start…ok, first of all, those Big Destinies are never made in the least big clear in book one of this trilogy other than a vague Stop the Bad Guys. Maybe that is not a huge problem in a trilogy, at least with some trilogies, but as far this work went at times I felt downright lost. At one point on the book we find out that two of the main characters, two teenagers on Earth, Karen Eggleston and Brian Clark, are really from one of the fantasy realms, so I can understand that they might have destinies and accept on faith that More Will Be Revealed Later. Fine, a standard fantasy maneuver, but then we get what appear to be obviously mundane characters from Earth who are said – by those on one of the fantasy realms – that they too have destinies. These humans from Earth wonder to themselves and others what they have to offer (one appears to mainly have the power of Gun, that’s it). How many destinies are we to keep track of? Are these destinies ever going to be revealed? One is a mob hit man, Eric Jacobsen, who wonders again and again why he had been drawn into this prophecy on another world, asking questions I myself had. He (and the reader) never gets those questions answered, at least in this first part of the trilogy.
A second problem is that there are way too many points of view and subplots to follow. In addition to Karen and Brian we get Aubric (a knight on the fantasy world) and a wise ally of a race known as gnarlymen (no explanation as to what that race is, but apparently somewhat like a gnome) who goes by the name of Summitch, Summitch assuring Aubric he has a huge destiny to fulfill. Not enough? We also get two MORE mob hit men, Joe Beast and Ernie Petranova, sent to kill/kidnap Karen and Brian. Still not enough? We get a wise old woman who lived across the hall from Karen’s apartment, a Mrs. Mendeck, apparently also from the fantasy world, who sort of had been preparing Karen for her Big Destiny, along with a female police officer (quite clueless as to the magic going on around here and existence of other worlds) who got involved in things when Ernie and Joe tried to kill Brian’s father, and THEN a number of characters on the fantasy world, including a powerful princess (seeking to overthrow her immortal father) and a powerful wizard known as a Judge (also wishing to take over his order and allying – for now – with the princess). Also we get magical floating, disembodied lights that talk through some sort of blend of music and telepathy, other Judges and members of the princess’s house who have their own schemes, a demigod that is basically a walking metal statue….too many characters to follow.
Another problem is that not enough time is spent detailing the setting or its characters. What exactly is a gnarlyman for instance? The princess and the Judge talk about humans with some derision and are said to be non-human (High Ones or High Lords) but other than being long-lived, very pale, and virtually lacking empathy looked pretty human to me. Those issues I could deal with but to me the bigger issue is describing the world or worlds involved; is there two worlds or three (beyond Earth)? Much of the book is spent running around endless tunnels underground, in a world sometimes called castle and sometimes capitalized, Castle. The world of castle/Castle is hard to navigate (requiring real skill and sometimes magic), has some real monsters in it, a fair amount of refugees, but confusingly is close to locations in the surface world of…castle? Is that another realm? The surface, not that we spend much time there, is one of trees, forests, and endless wars between various great houses, all based around a particular color. I never understood if the underground was a separate world from the surface world and if so what was the surface world called?
There were other problems, such as sometimes action scenes could have been better described, the confusion as to whether or not I should root for the princess, a Lady Karmille, who seemed to rather enjoy torture and casual cruelty, and too many one sentence paragraphs. Also the world of Earth often seemed much more vivid and fleshed out than either of the two fantasy realms, though in truth not sure how tunnels and the inside of castle rooms can continually appear more interesting than the various scenes on Earth.
What did I like? For all its problems, the pace was brisk. Some of the characters, though they could have used fleshing out, were fairly interesting and I grew to like a few. Though they could have used some better and more detailed descriptions, the monsters weren’t uninteresting. When one of the bad guys on Earth uses the people of a small town to stop Brian and Karen that was neat and creepy, with a real horror feel to it (though the scene was too short in my opinion). The world was interesting enough that I wanted to find out various things, such as the story behind the floating lights or why the surface world of Castle was fighting an endless war. I think the author certainly has potential but this book could have seriously used a good editor. I am not sure yet if I am going to read the second book.
The setting is a classic one in modern fantasy, one in which our world (in this case around the year 2000) is for the most part blissfully unaware that one (or two?) more fantasy worlds exists beyond our own, a world (or worlds) that feature European medieval or pseudo-medieval settings with magic and non-human sentient races. There is some travel between the worlds but only a very few can accomplish it. Various characters, characters with very little powers of their own (as far as they know) both on one of the fantasy worlds and on our world of Earth have Big Destinies ahead of them but the evil powers that be are aware of this before our heroes are and are taking steps to make sure those destinies are never fulfilled. At the same time there are those who wish the heroes success (and continued life) and are working to aid them while and when they can. Some are willing, witting allies, others are thrown in by circumstances. Much of the point of view is from characters who know little of either the setting as a whole or what the Big Plan is.
Sounds not bad right? Actually sounds pretty good but the execution is where the problems arise. Where to start…ok, first of all, those Big Destinies are never made in the least big clear in book one of this trilogy other than a vague Stop the Bad Guys. Maybe that is not a huge problem in a trilogy, at least with some trilogies, but as far this work went at times I felt downright lost. At one point on the book we find out that two of the main characters, two teenagers on Earth, Karen Eggleston and Brian Clark, are really from one of the fantasy realms, so I can understand that they might have destinies and accept on faith that More Will Be Revealed Later. Fine, a standard fantasy maneuver, but then we get what appear to be obviously mundane characters from Earth who are said – by those on one of the fantasy realms – that they too have destinies. These humans from Earth wonder to themselves and others what they have to offer (one appears to mainly have the power of Gun, that’s it). How many destinies are we to keep track of? Are these destinies ever going to be revealed? One is a mob hit man, Eric Jacobsen, who wonders again and again why he had been drawn into this prophecy on another world, asking questions I myself had. He (and the reader) never gets those questions answered, at least in this first part of the trilogy.
A second problem is that there are way too many points of view and subplots to follow. In addition to Karen and Brian we get Aubric (a knight on the fantasy world) and a wise ally of a race known as gnarlymen (no explanation as to what that race is, but apparently somewhat like a gnome) who goes by the name of Summitch, Summitch assuring Aubric he has a huge destiny to fulfill. Not enough? We also get two MORE mob hit men, Joe Beast and Ernie Petranova, sent to kill/kidnap Karen and Brian. Still not enough? We get a wise old woman who lived across the hall from Karen’s apartment, a Mrs. Mendeck, apparently also from the fantasy world, who sort of had been preparing Karen for her Big Destiny, along with a female police officer (quite clueless as to the magic going on around here and existence of other worlds) who got involved in things when Ernie and Joe tried to kill Brian’s father, and THEN a number of characters on the fantasy world, including a powerful princess (seeking to overthrow her immortal father) and a powerful wizard known as a Judge (also wishing to take over his order and allying – for now – with the princess). Also we get magical floating, disembodied lights that talk through some sort of blend of music and telepathy, other Judges and members of the princess’s house who have their own schemes, a demigod that is basically a walking metal statue….too many characters to follow.
Another problem is that not enough time is spent detailing the setting or its characters. What exactly is a gnarlyman for instance? The princess and the Judge talk about humans with some derision and are said to be non-human (High Ones or High Lords) but other than being long-lived, very pale, and virtually lacking empathy looked pretty human to me. Those issues I could deal with but to me the bigger issue is describing the world or worlds involved; is there two worlds or three (beyond Earth)? Much of the book is spent running around endless tunnels underground, in a world sometimes called castle and sometimes capitalized, Castle. The world of castle/Castle is hard to navigate (requiring real skill and sometimes magic), has some real monsters in it, a fair amount of refugees, but confusingly is close to locations in the surface world of…castle? Is that another realm? The surface, not that we spend much time there, is one of trees, forests, and endless wars between various great houses, all based around a particular color. I never understood if the underground was a separate world from the surface world and if so what was the surface world called?
There were other problems, such as sometimes action scenes could have been better described, the confusion as to whether or not I should root for the princess, a Lady Karmille, who seemed to rather enjoy torture and casual cruelty, and too many one sentence paragraphs. Also the world of Earth often seemed much more vivid and fleshed out than either of the two fantasy realms, though in truth not sure how tunnels and the inside of castle rooms can continually appear more interesting than the various scenes on Earth.
What did I like? For all its problems, the pace was brisk. Some of the characters, though they could have used fleshing out, were fairly interesting and I grew to like a few. Though they could have used some better and more detailed descriptions, the monsters weren’t uninteresting. When one of the bad guys on Earth uses the people of a small town to stop Brian and Karen that was neat and creepy, with a real horror feel to it (though the scene was too short in my opinion). The world was interesting enough that I wanted to find out various things, such as the story behind the floating lights or why the surface world of Castle was fighting an endless war. I think the author certainly has potential but this book could have seriously used a good editor. I am not sure yet if I am going to read the second book.
April 23, 2020
This book was fun but not great. Despite the fact that the viewpoint kept shifting annoyingly between as many as six or seven characters or groups of characters, it held my attention and made me want to keep reading. It didn't really finish - it's obviously just the first volume of three and there are still some very basic questions we don't have a clue about - but at least it didn't end on a cliffhanger. If my library had the other two volumes I would read them, but they don't. And I didn't like it enough to spend money on them.
Not sure what age this is intended for. Two of the protagonists are 16 and it's pretty OK for teens. Incest and torture are mentioned but not described.
Not sure what age this is intended for. Two of the protagonists are 16 and it's pretty OK for teens. Incest and torture are mentioned but not described.
November 30, 2022
This book had a lot of view point characters and at no point were any of them allowed even a general idea of a shape of what was happening around them.
July 11, 2007
This book (well, the entire series) is the antithesis of a good read. The characters are one-dimensional (one step below two-dimensional), the writing is hackneyed, there are no original ideas, and the ending is both a) horrifyingly predictable and b) a pathetic plea for a sequel series. The only reason I read through the entire series was that I couldn't believe that the low quality of the first book would continue. I kept trying to persuade myself that "it has to improve! It has to!" I was wrong. Do yourself a favor: if given a choice between reading the series and lighting your arm on fire, go for the fire without question. It'll be less painful, be over faster, and the wounds will take less time to heal.
May 29, 2014
I must have thought this looked like a good book at some point in time seeing as I bought it but I only managed to make it through the first 4 chapters before giving up. It starts with the poor oppressed child in our time period and switches to a knight in a medieval type world where magic and aliens are prevelant. There are gangsters, hoods, treasure and eccentric creatures, if you like books that incorporate our world and another world this might be a good book for you but I found it a bit boring.
May 22, 2008
Too much swearing and casual killing. The characters were weak, and I got half-way through the book (regrettably - I should have put it down much sooner) and was still wondering what the plot was, as well as the purpose for some main characters. I didn't even finish reading it - not worthwhile.
August 28, 2013
Not totally sure what to think. I had hardly any incentive to finish it, but the setting was original and that's something hard to come by in the fantasy genre these days. The characters were just a little bland and the humor felt forced. Forgettable at best, I guess.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews