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Amazing book and series!
This is the third novel and fourth story I have read by LaPoint. With each I am more impressed with his style, skills, and range. I had not read the description before picking this up. I picked up all his available books wile in the middle of reading the last one I read.
It is rare for me to highlight in a novel but I did two passages in this work. They are:
““There isn’t much else t'tell,” he said. “The world is more complicated than my intellect can convey. I guess you could put it this way: You ever feel like you’ve forgotten something but there really wasn’t anything t'forget?”
And
“I had imagined the golem as obstinate and inhumanly strong. Some of my own personality must have sunk in. I guess it's hard for an artist to not put bits of themselves into their work. August lashed out when he got annoyed. I could reign myself in most of the time. August did not.”
The story reads like a mash up of Madeleine L’Engle’s Kairos stories, with Frank Peretti’s novels, with a dash of Declan Finn smattered in. And it works perfectly. This wok is very different than either of the other novels I have read from LaPoint’s pen. I love the concept, and the execution is perfect.
The characters are wonderfully written. Our heroine Raven Mistcreek is a force to be reckoned with. She may be a Catholic school girl, but she has deep faith, and trusts in God’s leadings. She can also draw things with chalk and then pull out the object and use it.
Kasumi is a kimono wearing fox girl who can shape shift to human but prefers the fox girl shape with it's three tails. She also wields a sentient katana, but we do not find out much about it in this volume.
Damian, a knight a warrior and a man of faith, also Raven's older brother.
Percival, seems like a bit of a ronin, but one with great faith, skills, and an interest in Raven, also close friends to Damian.
Lord Spencer Blackwood a magician who resembles a floating cuttlefish ... will leave the rest for you to figure out.
Hellhounds, The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse and various other monsters, creatures and baddies.
To say nothing of warhorses or battle unicorns. And a Golem that someone is specifically proud and fond of.
The story moves at a quick pace. The whole adventure takes place over just a few days. But it travels through realms up and down the continuum. There is actions, battles, and some dark scary parts. There is also humour, fun and friendship. I can’t quite describe it as a buddle book, but it is close.
This was a wonderful read. I am excited to share it with my youngest two children and hope my niece and her brothers love it as well. Before I had even finished it I sent a copy to my niece as a birthday present and she is very excited about the book and series. I cannot wait to dig into the next volume. A great book in what is shaping up to be an epic series!
A Rabbit hole that goes straight to Dante's Inferno
A bit of a tough review: largely because it's difficult to pin down.
If you've ever read a John C. Wright novel you can see a lot of traditional fantasy stylings, as well as a tendency to go into full fantasy. Literally anything can be thrown at the reader, but by a certain point in the story, the reader doesn't even blink.
Think of any version of Alice in Wonderland where things became well and truly weird... then add chainsaws, shotguns, lightsaber, and a velociraptor with miniguns.
Chalk opens with Raven Mistcreek returning from catholic school to find her house disappeared into thin air, and the neighborhood dogs trying to kill her. So when a flying cuttlefish in a top hat tells her "Come with me if you want to live," it seems reasonable enough.
No, I'm not making any of that up. That's how the book opens. And that's before Raven Mistcreek really jumps down the rabbit hole, because the bottom of this rabbit hole isn't Wonderland, it's Hell itself. Thankfully, there are other stops along the way. Raven fits perfectly into the strange new world of magic and horrors, except she doesn't remember why, how, or anything else about her life. She has no memories, her family is missing, and the collected monsters of HP Lovecraft are out to kill her. The Dogs of War have started working for Death, and all Hell is about to break loose.
Why? Because her and her family are the key to stopping all of creation from being destroyed.
Luckily for Raven, she's not alone. Along the way, she acquires some interesting friends: a kitsune with a katana, a paladin, and a golem.
And, of course, Raven has her box of chalk. Anything she draws with chalk can come to life, and draw she does, everything form handguns to chainsaws to rifles, all of which play an important part in the story.
Before I comment on the story, let me reassure you of one thing: to start with, the "missing family" and "hero has amnesia" tropes are both resolved over the course of the book. Each element is replaced with much higher stakes than these. It's a refreshing change, since I have seen novels stretch out both tropes to a ludicrous decree (See: 90% of the plots involving Wolverine, or X-Files with a lost sister.).
The pace of this book is surprisingly, blisteringly fast. The threats are nearly omnipresent. This fantasy also has elements of a mystery, where we're given all the clues but everyone is too busy running for their lives to figure it out, like a Mickey Spillane or a John Dickson Carr. There's one new threat after another, and they stop just long enough for our heroes to figure out how to get past the next obstacle ... which usually leads to yet another running shootout, only with lightsabers.
And there's one conflict that feels very much like Dante's Inferno, but if he had shotguns. If one were to properly describe this book, it starts as Alice in Wonderland with guns, and ends in a battle that Edgar Rice Burroughs or Tolkien would have been happy to have written, complete with Knights, war unicorns, lightsaber, a Kaiju battle, and a living Lovecraft horror the size of a building.
Original review: https://upstreamreviews.substack.com/p/review-chalk-by-nr-lapoint
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