Kristen Britain

Green Rider — (1998-2010) Publisher: Karigan G'ladheon, unjustly suspended from school for drubbing a bully, runs away instead. On the road she encounters a dying Green Rider, or king's messenger, F'ryan Coblebay. Hunted by evildoers, and pierced by two black arrows, the Rider makes Karigan swear to deliver his vitally important message, then gives her a magic brooch that renders her all but invisible. Karigan also acquires Coblebay's mount, The Horse, who seems to know better than she does how to find Sacor City and King Zachary. While enjoying various adventures, she's chased by agents of Lord-governor Mirwellshe'll eventually learn that he's supporting the rebel Prince Amilton's bid to seize the throne. Worse, another conspirator, a magic-powered, elf-like Eletian renegade called Shawdell, has broken the D'Yer Wall, whose spells protect Sacoridia from the evil creatures of Blackveil Forest. Finding within herself unexpected talents and survival skills, Karigan eventually reaches King Zacharybut the message she brings is worthless. Then she remembers that Coblebay also entrusted her with a love letter. Its this that contains the real message, a warning of the plot against Zachary. A fresh, well-organized fantasy debut, with a spirited heroine and a reliable supporting cast.

Green Rider

Ride, Greenie, ride!

Karigan G'ladheon, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, has been kicked out of school because she beat up the son of a nobleman. On her way home she crosses paths with a Green Rider, one of King Zachary’s messengers. The Rider has two black arrows in his back, but before he dies he coerces Karigan into promising to take a sealed message to the king. Reluctantly, Karigan sets out to fulfill her vow. Along the way she meets allies and enemies, fights battles with creatures out of nightmare, makes friends with a horse, and learns a bit about magic, and herself, too.

For years I’ve been planning to read Kristen Britain’s Green Rider, which was first published in 1998. I finally decided to take the plunge into this big fantasy epic when Penguin released it in audio a few weeks ago. Pleased with the story and the audio performance, I listened to the entire book in just a couple of days. Penguin Audio’s version of Green Rider is read by Ellen Archer, who was new for me. She has a pleasant voice and had no problem with the diversity and range of male and female voices in Green Rider. She is a good narrator for this series.

The world of GREEN RIDER feels real. In this first story we learn about some of its history, politics, myths, legendary heroes, and games. This is all done naturally and without extensive infodumps. The characters, too, are mostly well done, though the villains tend to be shallow and overtly evil. Karigan is not always likeable, but she’s a willful and spunky heroine who I hope will become less aloof as the series goes on. Karigan is supported by several characters that we can’t help but like, such as her father, the batty Berry sisters and their invisible servants, a few other Riders, and King Zachary himself. Oh, and the horse!

Britain creates a nice balance of tension and leisure in Green Rider. Though murder, treachery, and political intrigue abound, there are several sweet times, too. I foresaw many of the plot’s “surprises,” and the end of the magical battle at the climax of the novel was a bit silly, but that didn’t bother me. Mostly I enjoyed riding with Karigan and living in her world for a time. I will be happy to read book two, First Rider’s Call.

Green Rider is a nice choice if you’re in the mood for a traditional fantasy epic with some familiar elements used in a refreshing, but not revolutionary, way. Those who like Mercedes Lackey’s VALDEMAR series will be especially pleased. —Kat Hooper

Green Rider

There is much good in this first novel and, unfortunately, much that's not so good —thus the 3 star rating.

The good first: Kristen Britain writes well and creates a likeable, if not complex and well-developed, heroine who should appeal strongly to young female readers. Britain also has a nice eye for imagery, the most powerful being the gray-clad rider and his sinister pairs of black arrows. And she, on the whole, creates a clean, refreshing fantasy setting. These traits will serve her well if and when she publishes again ...

And now the bad: As can be forgiven in a first novel, the plot often becomes a mess, either bogging down or running haywire. The former occurs near the beginning with the whole, weird episode with Miss Bayberry and Miss Bunchberry, whose presence simply throws the otherwise late-medieval setting entirely out of alignment by stuffing it with things Victorian. The latter occurs, as might be expected, at the climax, where KB conducts something of a gambit with a super-magical chess game, the foundation for which is not entirely laid. A strong sense of resolution is also lacking.

That said, Green Rider is readable and does draw you in nicely at times. While Kristen Britain's work by no means approaches that of, e.g., Robin Hobb's, it has potential. Writing is a long ride, as Kristen Britain (referring to herself as a "Green Writer") might realize. Time will tell what kind of journey this writer takes. —Rob Rhodes

First Rider's Call

After impressing King Zachary with her courage in Green Rider, Karigan G'ladheon has been sent north on a diplomatic mission. When her companions make the bad decision to camp in a magical place, a dark supernatural force is inadvertently loosed upon the world. It seems to be linked to Mornhavon the Black, who used evil magic to try to conquer Sacoridia a thousand years ago. Back then he was captured and walled into the Blackveil Forest, but now he is working his way free through a breach in the wall. Karigan’s friend Alton D’Yer has been sent to the wall to try to repair it. Meanwhile the whole country is experiencing strange magical events that are frightening the people and undermining their faith in the king. The Riders are experiencing problems with magic, too — suddenly their powers have become unreliable. And, most frightening of all, there’s a secret band of Sacoridians who have been waiting for generations to help Mornhavon the Black return.

First Rider’s Call, the second of Kristen Britain’s GREEN RIDER series continues Karigan’s adventures as a Green Rider. This is a long book (19½ hours in the audio version I listened to) that will appeal to those who liked Green Rider. The setting is well developed and I felt immersed in Britain’s world. In First Rider’s Call, we learn more of Sacoridia’s history and legends. Some of this history was cleverly related through ancient journal entries of the best friend of the man who became Mornhavon the Black.

Karigan continues to be a strong but stern character. I was hoping I’d warm up to her a bit in this second book, but I still found her difficult to embrace. She’s courageous and loyal, skilled at everything she does (even sword fighting), but she’s almost completely rigid and humorless. There’s not much to make her interesting other than a talent for staying alive. Men fall in love with her and people are afraid to get in her way, but I’m not really sure why they think she’s so awesome. When she gives a 30 second speech about how we’re-all-in-this-together-and-we-will-overcome, she sets the Riders’ hearts aflutter, but I thought it dull and trite. I’m afraid that Karigan’s personality is a stumbling block for me. I like her world, but I don’t really care enough about Karigan to want to spend more time with her. Her love interests, King Zachary and Alton D’Yer are more inspiring, but they are also unrelievedly good.

Kristen Britain’s writing does its job without calling attention to itself in either a positive or negative way. There’s nothing wrong with it except that it tries too hard to sound archaic. If you’re looking for beauty, you won’t find it here; “utilitarian” is a better description of Britain’s style. The plot is fast-paced but relies too often on deus ex machina involving ghosts and time travel. Villains are easily vanquished and we never really fear for our favorite heroes. Still, First Rider’s Call is a cozy high epic fantasy that will likely appeal to many, especially women since it contains a strong heroine.

The audio version is read by Ellen Archer who uses Irish and English accents for most of the characters. As long as you don’t mind these accents, you’ll probably enjoy this audio version. Archer gives a nice performance. —Kat Hooper

The High King's Tomb

From early on in The High King's Tomb, alarm bells started going off in my head. It doesn't take very long, if you've read the other two books (and you should have), to realize that a "grab the reader by the throat" event is conspicuously absent from the beginning of the story. There's one in the first book, there's one in the second book, but The High King's Tomb starts out on a noticeably meandering path.

And it continues to meander, without a great deal of urgency, for a long time. A lot of events happen, some of them interesting in relation to the world Britain has created, but overall none of them seem hugely relevant to solving the tensions of the main plot arc. In fact, they just seem to add in a bunch of new tensions without solving any old ones. Uh oh.

It takes a long time for the reader to understand why this book is called The High King's Tomb. By then, a lot of the elements of the book are coming together and making more sense for the plot of this book, but no amount of smoke and mirrors can distract the reader from the fact that it didn't really offer any resolution on the plot of the series as a whole. With almost 700 pages, more should have been resolved. I reiterate: Uh oh.

Kristen Britain has always gotten away with certain things (like Deus Ex Machina solutions) in part due to the strength of her characters. This time I'm not sure it'll be enough to pull some readers through. Main character Karigan mostly annoys me in this book. She doesn't get off on a good foot, with her diatribe about brothels early on. Pages of inner monologue about how wrong it is to sell your body, you should only be with the one you love, blah blah blah, oh! oh! oh! how terrible... I want to scream. Eventually I started to feel like Britain is trying way too hard to keep Karigan from being perfect that she's sliding towards backwards and unlikeable instead.

Other returning characters are a mixed bag. Estora, who had struck me in the previous books as being a strong, elegant young woman with a lot of bravery, hits romance heroine levels of stupidity in this books. She redeems herself a little by realizing that she's being stupid, but her demeanor here just seems like an excuse to make the book's storyline work. Alton and Merdigen, at the wall, both retain fairly high levels of interest, though. And then there are a number minor characters whom you'll likely wish had had slightly larger rolls.

New characters play out similar. You have Damien Frost and Lady who are interesting, in spite of being quite obviously based on Tom Bombadil and Goldberry from Lord of the Rings. Yet you also have Fergal, a Green Rider trainee with an abusive past, who does things so cruel and idiotic that his "redemption" feels forced. And there's Amberhill, who has two aspects, the first being that he's dumb as a brick. This makes him unbelievable in the role of a mysterious, charming thief ala Zorro... not to mention sad evidence that Britain seems to think it's necessary to stuff in every fantasy staple possible.

Though in a lot of ways I enjoyed the book and the alarm bells quieted some, they didn't go away completely. And Kristen Britain saying that she will "let the needs of the story dictate its own length" scares the bejeebus out of me. If the series ends at four books then fine, I can deal with the transition book that The High King's Tomb obviously is. But if it doesn't? Fantasy writers need to put a tighter rein on themselves, need to plan better before jumping into their works, or we're going to end up with a whole slew of unfinished Wheel of Time type series on the shelves. —Beth Johnson

Blackveil

PLOT SUMMARY: Over a millennium ago, Mornhavon the Black, heir to the Arcosian Empire, crossed the great sea hoping to replenish his depleted country by conquering the rich lands of Sacoridia. But Mornhavon underestimated the defenders of this far away land, and after years of siege, Mornhavon and his armies were vanquished — but not before Mornhavon resorted to desperate, dark magics that rendered his twisted spirit immortal. Eventually, Mornhavon was captured and imprisoned in Blackveil Forest, with Blackveil’s perimeter enclosed and protected by the magical D’Yer Wall.

For the thousand years since the end of that Long War, Blackveil Forest has been a dangerous place — corrupted by the spirit of this eternally malicious entity, its flora and fauna twisted in monstrous ways. But in the many centuries since the war’s end, knowledge of the working of magic has slowly disappeared from Sacoridia, due to the fear and prejudice of a people traumatized by the memory of the terrifying sorceries of Mornhavon’s invading army. Even the protective magic that created and maintained the D’Yer Wall has been lost. But this once-impermeable barrier has now been breached, allowing Blackveil’s malignant influence to begin to seep into the lands beyond the wall, threatening all of Sacoridia once again.

Karigan G’ladheon is a Green Rider, a seasoned member of the elite messenger corps of King Zachary of Sacoridia. Though Karigan was recruited to the Riders seemingly by chance, she has achieved more than any Rider since the corps was founded during the Long War, and has even been made a Knight of the Realm, the first to be so honored in over two hundred years. Karigan wears the magical brooch of the First Rider, an artifact that enables her to “fade,” sometimes to the point of traversing the barriers of time and space. Because of this extraordinary ability, she was able to enter Blackveil and transport the spirit of Mornhavon into the future, buying precious time for her country. Time for the Riders to scour the land searching for lost magical documents, and for members of Clan D’Yer to study the wall, hoping to uncover the secrets of their ancestors.

But Sacoridians are not the only people interested in the fate of Blackveil. For eons before the Long War, the peninsula where the tainted forest now stands belonged to the Eletians, an immortal race. With Mornhavon temporarily absent, they plan to send a small delegation into the forest to see what has become of their long-lost city, Argenthyne. But King Zachary senses the secretive Eletians are not being completely honest with him, and insists that an equal number of Sacoridians accompany them. Karigan, because of her previous experience in Blackveil, is an obvious choice for this perilous expedition.

Though Mornhavon is gone, the forest is still a treacherous and unnatural place filled with monstrous creatures and deadly traps. Plus, no one knows how far in the future Mornhavon has been sent — a hundred years? Ten years? A few years? Maybe even less? And unbeknownst to the contingent of Eletians and Sacoridians, another small group has entered the forest: a contingent of Arcosian descendents who have kept Mornhavon’s dark magic alive in secret for centuries, and who now plan to avenge their long ago defeat by bringing Sacoridia to its knees...

CLASSIFICATION: Featuring a reluctant heroine with incredible magical powers she did not know she possessed, an ancient evil bent on conquering the land, quests, a medieval-influenced feudal system, an elf-like race, and many other familiar tropes, the Green Rider series is traditional epic fantasy in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, Terry Brooks, Kate Elliott, L.E. Modesitt Jr., Greg Keyes, Jennifer Roberson, and David Farland.

FORMAT/INFO: Blackveil is 663 pages long divided over many unnumbered/titled chapters. Also includes a map of Blackveil/Argenthyne. Narration is in the third person via several different points-of-view, both major characters and supporting ones as well as heroes and villains, including the main protagonist Karigan G’ladheon; Laren Mapstone, captain of the Green Riders; Xandis Pierce Amberhill; Grandmother of the Second Empire, Alton D’Yer; Lady Estora, King Zachary’s betrothed; and a few other minor players. Blackveil is the fourth volume in the Green Rider series after Green Rider, First Rider’s Call and The High King’s Tomb. Enough background information is provided for readers new to the series to jump in with Blackveil, but it’s not recommended. As far as the ending, expect a series of cliffhangers to conclude Blackveil.

February 1, 2011 marks the North American Hardcover publication of Blackveil via DAW. Cover art is once again provided by Donato. The UK version will be published on June 16, 2011 via Gollancz.

ANALYSIS: It’s hard to believe, but the first Green Rider novel was released in 1998. Since then, my taste in books has evolved considerably. Fantasy may remain my favorite genre, but I’m more willing and eager to try out different kinds of novels, and the fantasy I enjoy the most these days tends to be of the less traditional variety. That said, there will always be a special place in my heart for traditional epic fantasy, which is why I couldn’t wait to read Blackveil. At the same time, however, I worried the book would suffer from the same issues that hindered The High King’s Tomb. Unfortunately, I was right.

First, though, the good news. Fans of the series will be pleased to learn that Blackveil does not deviate much from the formula established in the first three Green Rider books. Characters are still likable and well-developed with romance a major theme; the action remains exciting and family-friendly — for the most part at least; and Kristen Britain’s writing is once again charming and accessible, while demonstrating noticeable improvement with her prose. In short, most of the ingredients that made the first three Green Rider novels so much fun to read are still present in Blackveil.

The problem with Blackveil, the same problem that plagued The High King’s Tomb, is with the story. Or more precisely, the concern that Kristen Britain is starting to follow in the footsteps of Robert Jordan and making her fantasy series longer than necessary. After all, the Green Rider series was originally promoted as a trilogy, but obviously we’re at book four now with a fifth volume already in the works, and who knows how many other volumes yet to be published. Personally, I don’t mind that the author is extending the series — I really enjoy the characters and the setting, after all — but the manner in which Kristen Britain is prolonging the Green Rider saga is disheartening. Instead of focusing on the main story arc involving Mornhavon the Black, Second Empire and Sacoridia, the series has become weighted down with trivial matters like Karigan’s love life, court politics and family drama. This was a major issue in The High King’s Tomb, and sadly Blackveil suffers from the same problem.

As the title implies, the fourth book in the Green Rider series revolves around the corrupted forest Blackveil and the different factions who seek something there, including Grandmother, the Eletians, and Karigan. This storyline, which features some of the most thrilling moments in the novel, is a lot of fun to read. The problem is that it’s overshadowed by such mundane matters as Karigan dealing with family secrets; the numerous romantic complications that arise concerning Karigan, Lady Estora, Alton D’Yer and Estral Andovian; court politics involving King Zachary’s marriage, assassination attempts and a power-hungry advisor; and even a masquerade ball. While these subplots are there to add depth and substance to the characters and main story arc in the series, they just take too long to develop, significantly slowing down the pace of the novel and bloating the page count. To make matters worse, a number of subplots fail to progress very far — including the breach at D’Yer Wall, the pending war against Second Empire, and Xandis Pierce Amberhill’s fascination with pirates and the sea kings — resulting in cliffhangers that are difficult to stomach considering the lengthy wait between volumes, while the story itself offers very few surprises due to familiar ideas and transparent plotting.

Apart from these issues with the story and concerns about the extended length of the series, Kristen Britain’s Blackveil has everything that Green Rider fans could hope for including romance, adventure, humor, time travel, dark magic, entertaining drama, ghosts, prophetic visions, and much more. In fact, even with all of the problems the book suffers from — bloated page count, trivial subplots, cliffhangers, etc. — Blackveil is still one of the better entries in the series. Unfortunately, I can only recommend Blackveil to die-hard Green Rider fans and anyone who loves to read traditional epic fantasy and is not bothered by archetypes and tropes. As for those who want something different, it would be wise to look elsewhere... —Robert Thompson