Rating: 
Summary: Unusual and Enthralling
Review: I am a huge fan of fantasy novels and Beyond the Pale has to be one of my all time favorites. I have read all sorts of fantasy work from Terry Brooks whom i find inspiring to Micael Moorcock and Anne Mcaffrey who are riviting. Once i started reading i could not put the book down. I found the story refreshing and unlike other fantasy works i felt there was a connection to the now as well as having that fantasy world, therefore giving the fantasy world a link to the presant instead of limiting it to the realms of ancient ledgend. It was also inspirirng to find fantasy heros that are not sword weilding steriotypes. I loved the book and found myself longing for the sequal, i would recomend this book to any fantasy reader
Rating:
Summary: A haunting and beautifully written novel of the fantastic.
Review: I am not usually a fantasy fan (few writers can equal Tolkien, who serves as my benchmark for quality), but this book is definitely the exception. The beginning chapters are utterly chilling, and the rich weaving of character, description, and plot have woven a tapestry of wonder from which I could NOT turn away. Bravo! Well done! This writer has rekindled my love of fantasy which lesser writers had nearly extinguished.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book that needed to trim about 100 pages
Review: I definitely enjoyed reading this, and once I started I was hooked. HOWEVER, this was a relatively looonnnngggg book that could have easily been trimmed by 100 or so pages. There were some very nice dark fantasy elements that gave this a bit of an edge over other fantasy I've read. And I enjoyed Travis's journey (and that of Grace), but I would have liked to read more about Travis and his "pals", not to mention a bit more action. Travis came across as too wimpy throughout the entire novel. Maybe book 2 shows him dealing a little better with his newfound powers. Grace was a very interesting character, but it wasn't very plausible why she considered herself such a loner, such a social outcast. Everyone she met was struck by her incredible beauty. Seriously, how many gorgeous women are social outcasts? All in all, a fun read, and at some point in the near future I'll have to check out the second book.
Rating:
Summary: Good book that needed to trim about 100 pages
Review: I definitely enjoyed reading this, and once I started I was hooked. HOWEVER, this was a relatively looonnnngggg book that could have easily been trimmed by 100 or so pages. There were some very nice dark fantasy elements that gave this a bit of an edge over other fantasy I've read. And I enjoyed Travis's journey (and that of Grace), but I would have liked to read more about Travis and his "pals", not to mention a bit more action. Travis came across as too wimpy throughout the entire novel. Maybe book 2 shows him dealing a little better with his newfound powers. Grace was a very interesting character, but it wasn't very plausible why she considered herself such a loner, such a social outcast. Everyone she met was struck by her incredible beauty. Seriously, how many gorgeous women are social outcasts? All in all, a fun read, and at some point in the near future I'll have to check out the second book.
Rating:
Summary: I felt as if I was living the female character. It was wild
Review: I did not expect to like the book when I first picked it up. But after I started reading the book I found that I could not put the book down and I need to know, even after I put the book down what was going on and how the characters were progressing in the story. I hurried home from work or what everelse I was doing to hurry home to find out was happening next. It was a page turned and I could not put it down. I highly recommed this to anyone and am inpaitently awaitng the next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyed reading this fantasy novel.
Review: I don't usually read fantasy novels. I picked up the book by mistake at the library and decided to read it since I had already brought it home. I thought that the story was a bit disconnected in some areas because of all the shifting the author does between the different character developments. In the end though, the story lines mesh well enough to make this an enjoyable reading for fantasy aficionados (and recent converts).
Rating: 
Summary: Vague and cribs from others
Review: I hate giving up on a book without finishing it, but Mark Anthony's "Beyond the Pale" is severely testing my resolve. What could have been an intriguing premise is ruined by heavy-handed writing and characters that remain mere sketches locked in whatever personality trait that Mr. Anthony decides makes them memorable/individual.The book starts off as a poor man's Stephen King with unknown "magical" people attacking a bartender and dead men rising in a Denver hospital morgue. It continues on the path of unbelievability and happenstance with the lead characters of a morose, immature, indecisive bartender (Travis) and a repressed doctor (Grace). Both of them are so unappealing on first sight that I found it hard to care what happened to either of them once they entered the world of Eldh. They get dragged from situation to situation with nary a word of complaint or an original idea of their own. As another reviewer stated, the people they meet in Eldh are *much* too much like David Eddings' characters. Melia is simply Polgara under another name and Anthony seems content to let Polgara's sarcasm tic define his character of Melia. The problem is that at least Eddings (while not a stellar author himself) at least gave us much more background about Polgara and made the sarcastic/ironic comebacks part of her personality. Melia has no discernable personality that I can detect and there seems to be no reason for Travis to automatically respond to her treatment of him. Then we have the knight, Beltan, who is a duplicate of Mandorallen right down to the noble birth slightly overshadowed by bastardy; Falken, who seems to be taking the Belgarath role, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Travis discovers he can work magic and burns someone in a *direct* parallel of Garion - except where Garion wrestled with the sudden revelation of these powers and was horrified at what he'd done, Travis seems to exist in a hazy fog where "Oh. That was bad." is the most he can come up with. There's even a name for someone that seems to be directly lifted from Janny Wurts' much superior "Wars of Light and Dark" series. The world-building is minimal at best. It's cold, you walk a lot and it seems vaguely medieval. It reads as if Anthony checked out several books from the library on medieval society/history, highlighted what he thought was interesting and then tossed the rest of it into the scrap heap. Add to that, we're supposed to believe that Something Bad Is Coming (and you can hear the capitals when the characters talk about it), but it's so nebulously and haphazardly foreshadowed that all the "planning" by the characters comes across as limp and flat. The speech Falken gives is a piece of obvious exposition (around the size of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic) that apparently couldn't be fit in any other way, and I found myself skimming the pages rather than actively reading them to gain any further information. Skimming is the best way to read this book if only to be spared the totality of such ludicrous situations as Grace being rescued by a knight, taken to a castle and there told by the king that he wants her to spy for him - which *might* have been believable if Anthony had ever given any hint of Boreas' POV or even Grace's beyond just having her and Travis react. Neither of them *do* anything beyond letting themselves get pulled and pushed around to the next supposed "revelation". The entire story is disjointed with a tenuously linked narrative that teeters like a house of cards, ultimately falling victim to its own shortcomings. I see that Anthony has written at least two more books this series, but I won't be reading them. In order to earn the right to have more books in a series read by me, the author must first sell me on his/her ability to create a world, characters and believable situations. Anthony has failed at all three.
Rating:
Summary: The best book since J. R. R. Tolkien
Review: I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I can hardly wait until the sequel comes out. I could not put it down after I started reading. It is FANTASTIC!
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good
Review: I have to admit that I wasn't really expecting much from this book. The blurb on the back cover was what prompted me to buy it in the first place; I'm a sucker for good "advertising" like that when it comes to fantasy novels.
But, surprise! I opened to the prologue, with the unlikely title of "Brother Cy's Apocalyptic Traveling Salvation Show", and was instantly hooked. This is a well-written beginning to a six-book cycle, which apparently concerns threats not only to the other-dimensional world of Eldh, but also to our Earth as well.
Anthony does not seem to develop his two Earthly protagonists too well. I could not get a clear picture of Travis; one could compare him to Clark Kent just beginning to discover his powers, but that's a very broad generalization. And Grace Beckett strikes me as a Vulcan transported to the world of fantasy who is beginning to learn about her emotions. There is also a strong indication that she was abused in some way in her childhood, but nothing definite is mentioned. Hopefully Anthony will expand on their characters in later volumes.
The residents of Eldh, however, are much more fleshed out and well-defined - the Lady Kyrene seemed very sinister, King Boreas is a little more intelligent than his hulking appearance makes him seem, and Durge and Beltan are just a bit more than the standard noble defenders of the realm.
Of necessity there are some characters who are cloaked in mystery. Falken the bard and the Lady Melia, as well as Queen Ivalaine pose more questions than answers at this point. Exactly who are they, and what do they know? Are they trying to save Eldh or do they have other purposes in mind?
I do not see even vague similarities to Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series here, despite several reviewers' claims. In fact, there are far more similarities to David Eddings' "Belgariad" and "Mallorean" cycles than anything else.
I look forward to the next book in this series.
Rating: 
Summary: Rather sad copy of others
Review: I picked this book up at the library and I must admit that I am very pleased that I did not pay for it. I would have to agree with the other negative reviews in that this is a clear copy of Stephen King (any), Stephen Donaldson's (Thomas Covenant series), with a bit of David Edding's and Tolkien thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately without the skill of the above writers. It starts off as a King type story and then gets very annoying. The writing is quite annoying and I would have to say immature. I found it lacked a major plus for me in that I could not relate to any of the characters. They are definitely two dimensional, and are never developed (nor is the plot). The parts where 'Grace' is talking with the King are laughable, and Travis was a pain in his response to everything - possibly an attempt to copy Thomas Covenant and his inability to relate/believe in what was happening to him? I checked a couple of times to see if the author was a male or a female. It was that type of writing that made me think of a woman who can not understand how a male thinks? This is not an attack on women; some male and female writers have this problem. Some of the 'logic' is quite silly in that at times the characters have certain powers and at others they appear to be quite useless, with no explanation why. How can a rune user simply fix things by saying 'Be Whole'? What happened to the training? There is a hell of a lot better out there if you have an interest in SF. If not sure - check out your library and save a few dollars.
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