The Red Stone

by Craig Smith

Tennen's life had been rather uneventful under the servitude of Freil the tavern keeper. The tavern was his life and he didn't know of or remember of much else. All this was changed when he was visited by a mysterious crow and given a rather remarkable red gem. From that very moment his life was thrust into a new direction. It was a new path of adventure, excitement, new joy, danger and deathly peril. Very much different to his mundane life of before. And before very long Tennen was thrown into the conflict between Count Errgol and his unending desire to take over Elfwood, and its unrivalled wealth of resources. Tennen doubted if he would be of much use in such a thing as a full out war. He was just a tavern boy, but his attitude soon changed as he started to be trained by Rimotar a wizard of Melin. Tennen was very unskilled and had a lot to learn from the second highest ranked wizard in the whole of Melin. On their way towards the city of Ramchester the capital of Melin they meet up with Lady Loreria the ambassador of Elfwood. She has been sent by the king of Elfwood to get as much support as she can from Melin. It was a war that threatened to overflow into Melin if it was not stopped quickly. Tennen wasn't too sure how he was going to be able to help, but this didn't matter to him, Melin was his country too and he wasn't going to let it be attacked. Tennen wasn't sure if he could survive a war but he did know that his life would never be the same again.

286 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2007

About the author

Apart from some years in the UK and months in the US Craig Smith has lived most of his life in South Africa. (Everywhere from PE to Cape Town). Having a wild imagination from ever since he could remember he finally decided to take advantage of it when he was 19, and began writing seriously. Since then he has written 2 novels, numerous short stories and started 3 other novels. He hopes to finish them all sometime this decade. His most exciting project at the moment is a post apocalyptic novel with 3 other South African writers called Crumbling Ruins, which could turn out to be a total disaster or the best book ever written. He currently wiles away his time just outside Paarl writing, reading and generally being not very social.

Reviews

[Gavin Gates · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is straight up classic fantasy, Smith has written a brilliant and very engaging introduction into a world that would fit perfectly into a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. The beauty of this novel comes into play through the interactions and the backgrounds of the different races to live on the Kingdom of Melin. Smith has used Giants, trolls, humans and Dragons and took them all from a very unique style of viewpoint where they don’t necessarily have to be good or evil just because of what they traditionally are seen as, this, coupled with the brave writing approach of not needing to describe every sword swipe of every battle down to the finest detail makes ‘the red stone’ into a very easy to follow tale.
From the first page in Tennen is a very likeable and obvious focal point throughout even before the introduction of his magical artefact or going into his history before your first encounter with him. Every character you meet from chapter to chapter is genuinely memorable and there are many lovely moments like the meeting of Tennen and Captain Norton who has a large role to play in Tennen’s development and both wizards Rimotar and Venten whose opposing personalities work superbly with each other and makes me want to know about each characters back story a lot more than I got to. The real stand out is Berrinn, a Bronze dragon who befriends and builds a very solid human bond with Tennen that steals the story almost on its own.

The book ends on a perfect note and leads into follow on that I can say with a huge relief I have sitting on my shelf and can’t wait to start on next. If you are in any way a fan of classic fantasy then I can’t recommend The Red Stone enough.