Wingheart: Luminous Rock

Wingheart Trilogy #1

by Benjamin Gabbay

Magnus Wingheart never knew about the world of Arkane. He never knew about the past his older brother, Drake, had kept hidden from him, nor that his parents had died at the hands of an inhuman enemy in a city he had never known to exist. When that enemy resurfaces, sixteen-year-old Magnus, Drake, and their former guardian, Cecil Handel, become ensnared in a deadly hunt for an elusive object they know almost nothing about. Their only escape entails confronting their pursuer—the immortal madman Daimos Recett, the pivotal figure in a grand scheme that arches across the realms of existence and threatens all of Arkane.

Carved with an ever-deepening plot, Wingheart: Luminous Rock weaves magic, technology, and science in an enthralling tapestry that rends the line between fantasy and reality.

www.winghearttrilogy.com

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy

680 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2012

About the author

Benjamin Gabbay is a young writer in Toronto, Canada. Drawing inspiration from mythology, the supernatural, and intriguing scenes of the everyday world, he loves to fashion intricate storylines that infuse a stunning new realism into classic fantasy. After the publication of Wingheart: Luminous Rock in 2012 just prior to his 17th birthday, Benjamin presented talks and workshops at Canadian libraries and schools with the aim of inspiring other young writers to follow through on their literary ambitions and share their work with the world. He has been a member of the Toronto Public Library’s Editorial Youth Advisory Group since 2012.

Benjamin is also a passionate student of classical piano and composition, currently pursuing studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He is scheduled to enter the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music Composition Program in Fall 2016. Also a graphic and website designer, Benjamin is the creator of the challenging Web riddle game Cipher: Crack the Code, which has fans worldwide, including in China and the Philippines.

Reviews

[Wise_owl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book an honest chance, and I have to say that while possessing of some interesting idea's, it's execution suffered on a number of levels that left it not very enjoyable as a read.

The book is essential a sort of portal fantasy; Magnus Wingheart is a young man whose parents died years before. Living in his brothers bookshop he discovers he is part of a secret conflict on another world, that magic is real, and that these two facts will now push him into a life more adventurous than he could possibly have wanted.

The premise is, if not novel, an interesting enough one and I did enjoy much of the setup of magic as simply the 'science' of another dimension. If nothing else Gabbay has established a complete set of magical systems. The problems with it are two-fold. The biggest initialy one is that the buy-in is rather incomplete. Fiction that starts in the 'real world' and than transports you to a magical one must first establish the reality of the mundane, something I feel the book doesn't do. To compare; The Amber series features a man discovering the truth about himself and his family in a magical world, but it's establishment, from the hospital through to his first meeting with his sister has the feel of a contemporary detective novel that leads us into the fantasy. Conversely this book doesn't do enough to establish the venue of the 'real world' and it's hard to catch the tone of where the story is going initially.

I would also comment that the prose tends towards the verbose, a sin I find myself guilty of as a writer and thus perhaps most sensitive to. Ultimate there may be a good story to be told, but it just came across as 'ok' to me.

[erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought all the books on a whim, at a book fair a couple years back and let me just say I regret everything. I really wanted to love this book, I even met the author and was so excited to read it after taking about it with him. But maybe its just me, but I found it so boringgggg. I couldn't bring myself to even finish this book(so I guess I technically didn't even read the entire thing), that's how hard it was. I wasn't able to connect to the characters at all, and that basically ruined the chances of me enjoying this book from the start.

[Fainne Firmin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book from "The Word on the Street" signed by the author when it first came out, and I remember being surprised that the author was two years older than me - seventeen - and that he'd spent ten years working on this. Yes. We spoke. There was no one else showing interest so I talked with the guy. The book seemed interesting.

The conversation made me quite excited to read it, and I was . . . underwhelmed. He'd done a great job of making it sound good, and in truth the plot and characters are good. It's just - a habit of too much flowery prose when it's not needed. That hit me right from the first page. Pretty descriptions are nice, but don't kick off the first paragraph with it! Start with something a little more exciting and then move into that. And even then, don't over do it.

That said, once I moved passed the overdone prose (which made it take longer than it should've to read) I enjoyed it. The plot kept me guessing, I like the world that had been built; though at times it was really detailed and I saw how he'd spent ten years working on this. But the story was good, and the character's weren't to bad. The one that really sticks in my memory is the harpy lady. Why? She was a complex, and really interesting character! The rest were a little more generic, but they weren't bad.

Unfortunately, the book just didn't wow me. It dragged at places, or made things complicated. And so much flowery prose. I think that just annoys me the most. Some descriptions were seriously overdone.

[Synnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent book. The plot was pretty good but I found it rather slow. I didn't find the characters were overly memorable. The problem I had with the book was the writing itself. He seemed to go over the top with trying to pack his sentences with as much as possible. It seemed like he was trying to add a noun, a verb, an adverb and an adjective in every single sentence. It was unnecessary more often than not. It was an decent enough read but I don't think I'll be reading the rest in the trilogy. Unfortunately the cover is absolutely beautiful and very World of Warcraft-y and I love it... But the writing itself wasn't as great.

[Minddrag · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book and I thought it was amazing. It was really well crafted and I think that the story line flowed along really well. It had a complicated story line that made the plot more interesting and the characters were well crafted. I really loved the characters and the powers that they use in the book. The magic was really interesting. It was interesting because it is different from most magic in books.

[Freddie Rivera · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. I enjoyed it from start to finish. I can't wait for the next one, and I recommend it to everyone.