I'll admit it: I'm addicted to Baldur's Gate. After my son goes to bed at night, I shirk my household duties and sit myself down in front of the computer for an hour or two of playing. It's engrossing. But the net result is that, instead of finishing the game in a week or so, it's taking me quite a long time indeed. Which just feeds the addiction, I'm afraid.

What's this got to do with Beyond the Pale? you ask. A legitimate question. The answer is simply this: Cover Art. I was in the bookstore a few weeks back looking for something new to read. As you can imagine from my enjoyment of RPG's, I like a good fantasy or sci-fi tale. I noticed Beyond the Pale not because I recognized the author (which I didn't) or that it was recommended to me (which it wasn't) but because of the cover art. The cover has a central image with 'icons' down the left hand side. Very similar to the Baldur's Gate layout on my computer's monitor. So I bought it, and never mind that they were runestones and not icons. Mark down one sale for Stephen Youll, the cover artist.

Then I started to read it.

And I decided from there on out that I would solicit recommendations before buying another book.

The main problem is that the first few chapters read like they came out of Creative Writing 101. You know: the one where the students give an adjective or two to every single noun, and come up with similies that are jarring and awkward. After 12 chapters of this (which span 60 pages), it becomes almost difficult to avoid laughing at a line like, "She watched transfixed as the [elevator] doors rolled to either side, like an opening eye turned on its side."

Anthony does settle down after a while. A few dozen chapters in and the adjectives are more well-behaved, the similies become few and far between. At that point, you can stop chuckling and start paying attention to the plot. Is the plot any good? Well, from a strict fantasy point of view, it borrows a lot of elements from other, more well-established, works.

People have compared Travis, one of the two fish-out-of-water characters, to Donaldson's Thomas Covenant and, to be honest, I did think of Covenant as I read the book. But mostly these thoughts took the form of "at least Travis isn't as annoying as". So, point for Anthony.

Melia, a sorceress, can be likened to one of David Eddings' matriarchal characters and we can go as far back as Tolkien to see an object (a rune stone) which has a mind of its own.

The biggest problem Anthony has with these story elements is that he's inconsistent in their use. Partway through the book, the aforementioned rune stone suddenly loses its free will, and not by some means that is evident in the book. It just stops acting out. Again: in one scene Melia is comfortably in charge and, in another, she's being led around a castle, being told where to go, by a character with no clear plan of what to do.

The story could really benefit from a rewrite; cleaning up the first part of it, and making the characters and story elements consistent throughout. Changing one or two ideas here and there would also help in distancing the more obvious "idea borrowing".

This is the first part of a trilogy of books (at least, so far. Trilogies these days have a tendency to go on and on). Unfortunately, there wasn't enough here to make me want to read beyond Beyond the Pale. Anthony wrapped up enough of the plot to leave me comfortable with the idea of not finding out what happens after this.

So that kind of answers the question I asked a few paragraphs ago about the plot. Is it any good? If it were good, if Anthony were a better writer, I'd probably want to read more of it. Maybe after he's gotten his style worked out and he starts coming up with his own stories, I'll give him another shot.

Until then, I'm looking forward to more of Stephen Youll's cover art.