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Peter's Garden
It’s an adventure he did not seek. As a teen with a boring life, Peter suddenly finds himself thrust into the Forest of the Dawn--an unfamiliar world where Woods rule. He is marked as the feared “Warm Blood of prophecy,” spoken of in the Ancient "This shall be a day of warning unto the Forest,when a Warm Blood shall come among you, bearing no name, having no roots. Take heed…lest in that day you are burned…"Peter’s Garden is a wondrous fantasy following Peter through a series of thrilling trials, dangers, relationships and reflections that lead him out of the wild Forest to the peaceful life of the North Garden. In the process, he meets and falls in love with Colleen, a true princess whose family has rightful claim to the Forest and Garden kingdom. Here is your passport to a most extraordinary journey. If you’ve never been to the Forest of the Dawn, enter now!
- GenresFantasy
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 30, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2019
I wanted to like it but I couldn't make it past the second chapter. It is a cute premise and maybe with the right audience it would be a winner but I am not that audience. I found story to move very slowly, unnecessarily descriptive and the main character pouty.
May 31, 2012
An inventive start ends up in a rather pedestrian finish.
Peter is a slightly fussy teen who spends his time disliking school and tending his own garden. One day he finds a box half-buried in it, and in the struggle to get it free from the earth knocks himself out and wakes up amnesiac in another world. In the Forest, trees walk and talk and form a Council based on the old texts called the Inner Rings. Apparently he is the prophesied Warm Blood, who may or may not cleanse the Forest with fire. While they try to make him into one of them, a voice named Tor hints of another way, and that maybe, just maybe, the Forest Council is lying to him.
While it starts out good, with the Forest being an intriguing place to wake up in, it starts to show flaws quickly. Peter has forgotten his name, and one of the steps the Council does in order to "contain" the prophecy is give him a new one. Unfortunately the new one is...Mark Wood. He's referred to by that name throughout most of the book, so it's a sticking point. It doesn't help that the first tree he meets is also called Burn Wood.
The plot is mixed. There's a resistance of course, but it really doesn't feel that interesting and the fulfillment of it borrows a bit too heavily from the Narnia books. Ironically it's at its best describing the Forest, which has more realistic motivations and characters rather than the ostentatiously "good" side. It can go from an interesting scene to a boring one in a matter of pages, and the ending is a cop out.
The last problem is in the book's analogies. You get the sense that they want to be a bit like Narnia, but if you catch some of the smaller references and wonder at some of the missing information, it makes the book seem confusing early on. Discussing them in spoilers so you can slip by:
Also:
Finally:
It's still a decent book, and if you like Christian Fantasy in general you can add one star to it. I had too many issues with it to give it more than "okay."
Peter is a slightly fussy teen who spends his time disliking school and tending his own garden. One day he finds a box half-buried in it, and in the struggle to get it free from the earth knocks himself out and wakes up amnesiac in another world. In the Forest, trees walk and talk and form a Council based on the old texts called the Inner Rings. Apparently he is the prophesied Warm Blood, who may or may not cleanse the Forest with fire. While they try to make him into one of them, a voice named Tor hints of another way, and that maybe, just maybe, the Forest Council is lying to him.
While it starts out good, with the Forest being an intriguing place to wake up in, it starts to show flaws quickly. Peter has forgotten his name, and one of the steps the Council does in order to "contain" the prophecy is give him a new one. Unfortunately the new one is...Mark Wood. He's referred to by that name throughout most of the book, so it's a sticking point. It doesn't help that the first tree he meets is also called Burn Wood.
The plot is mixed. There's a resistance of course, but it really doesn't feel that interesting and the fulfillment of it borrows a bit too heavily from the Narnia books. Ironically it's at its best describing the Forest, which has more realistic motivations and characters rather than the ostentatiously "good" side. It can go from an interesting scene to a boring one in a matter of pages, and the ending is a cop out.
The last problem is in the book's analogies. You get the sense that they want to be a bit like Narnia, but if you catch some of the smaller references and wonder at some of the missing information, it makes the book seem confusing early on. Discussing them in spoilers so you can slip by:
Also:
Finally:
It's still a decent book, and if you like Christian Fantasy in general you can add one star to it. I had too many issues with it to give it more than "okay."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews