Book Review: The Golden Chord by Paul Genesse

I don’t read much fantasy. Aside from being a huge Tolkien fan I’ve only ever delved into a handful of other fantasy series.’ My mom’s friend’s husband just wrote this book and gave me a free copy so I put in the beach bag along with the others I’m reading (we do a lot of reading at the beach but alas, I will never be tan like April is). Overall I would say the Golden Chord is a good book and worth reading. Genesse is a new writer and this often shows in his writing especially when he occasionally relies upon the crutch of clichés. The protagonist was someone who felt very real and Genesse did a good job of getting the reader to sympathize with and care about him. Another thing that Genesse did very well was to create a unique and thought provoking world.

Geneses’ world consists of a series of plateaus that are elevated over a sea of clouds that cover what is known only as ‘the Void.’ This Void is apparently the source of all the dragons and other flying beasts that constantly plague the inhabitants of the plateaus who live in caves or under sheltering trees to protect themselves from these ‘aevians’ (I don’t know if Genesse was the first person to come up with that title or not, but it’s a good one).
Here are some photos I took from a plane above central Utah. I imagine that this is what the view of the Void from Cliffton looks like.

Even thought The plot was, at some points, kind of standard (too much of a coming of age story as well as the standard journey to the dragon’s lair) and I thought that the love story was a little boring (too young adult) The Golden Chord was very good read and I will definitely be looking for the sequel (all fantasy novels have sequels because fantasy writers can never condense their ideas into just one book). I would recommend the book to anyone looking for an entertaining fantasy read.

Here are my hopes and predictions for the next books: I hope the hero/s have to actually journey down into the Void. There could be a whole cool new world down there. I predict that Drake will have to use both his own and Ethan’s thorn bolts in a final battle of some kind (or Ethan’s spirit will somehow use it to protect Drake). I also bet that there will be some sort of unification between the two main religions as well as their respective male and female deities. I predict that the dark chord that binds Ethan and drake will later be discovered to be a golden chord (I thought for sure that was how this book was going to end). I hope that either the series is only a few books longer or that the books remain short. I get annoyed when I start a series only to have the author drag it out for ten books, especially if each volume is like 800 pages long. I only have so much time people!