Rating: 
Summary: AMAZING
Review: If your into wizards, magic etc... this is the book for you. Marc Anthony is the best author I have ever read, since JK Rowling, of course.... This is a book you'll want to read over and over again, so don't just rent it from the library, BUY IT!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty boring but not totally
Review: It was on chapter 13 before I decided I was going to read the whole book. During the first part of the book I kept falling asleep. It picks up a bit after that but by and large the book is a pretty boring read. I won't be reading the other books in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: A great engrossing read filled with excitement galore.
Review: Mark Anthony's "Beyond the Pale" is head and shoulders over most of the modern fantasy you find. Obviously a man of varied interests, his attention to detail on subjects far and wide really brings life to a genre that has gotten pretty cliched. There are many unexpected twists and turns. He better start writing faster. I'm impatient to start reading the followup!
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the ink
Review: Mark Anthony's Beyond the Pale is not worth the time or effort and certainly not the money.The similarities between this book and David Eddings' Belgarion series abound, Eddings' being the far better planned and executed of the two. Mr. Anthony's two protagonists, Travis, a Colorado barkeep and small business-owner, and Grace, a Denver emergency ward M.D., land in a fantastic world on the eve of the requisite apocalypse. Both characters, respected and responsible in Colorado seem to land in a roles of 12-year-olds in the mystical land of Eldh. Travis starts his journey with two Eddings rip-offs (identical down to their clothing) Melia and Falken, both of whom treat Travis like an irresponsible teenager. Mr. Anthony then redefines Travis's character: Travis in Eldh is not only willing to accept the role of the teenager but becomes moody and brooding and is racked with periods of self-pity: All the best qualities for a 33-year-old hero. Melia and Falken are continually rude and condescending to our hero, even after he saves their lives with powers far-exceeding their own. At least Belgarath and Polgara were polite to their companions. Grace, though quite comfortable in the emergency room, also acts like a young teenager in Eldh. In her case, she is mistaken for royalty and accepts the role of resident spy for a local king, a part she is not suited for and succeeds to learn nothing of after a period of many months. Grace's story takes up a great deal of the book, though very little happens. One should wonder if Mr. Anthony is being paid by the word. Mr. Anthony teases us with details hinting at Grace's own magical powers, but takes so long in developing them that readers will get the feeling that the author has not yet decided what they should be. Much of the problem with the novel lies in its execution. The reader must wade through several chapters before reaching tidbits of plot developers. For example, in two scene Travis and Grace set out hand-in-hand to explore the castle. In both cases, they search unused rooms, in which the reader is led to believe contain evidence of the dreaded Raven Cult, only to discover nothing. What is made of this? Nothing. What conclusions are reached? None. What happens next? The characters go their separate ways back to their unexciting lives. It is obvious that Mr. Anthony intends Beyond the Pale to be the first volume of a series. I would like to suggest that before he starts writing the next one he define his characters ahead of time, giving them likeable, if not noble, qualities (at least the protagonists,) and decide what actions said characters should engage in, thus eliminating possibly hundreds of pages of text that have little or nothing to do with the plot.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the Pale
Review: Mark Anthony's Beyond the Pale was awesome
Rating:
Summary: Pale Imitation
Review: Sometimes you have to wonder how a book makes it to print. This is certainly one of those times. Beyond the Pale is a highly disjointed, derivative, predictable, meandering mess. Anthony freely borrows from better authors for his overly familiar tale. Only heroes from Earth can save the world! (Spellsinger, Glory Road, just to name a few) The ancient evil is about to break free from his prison! (Directly from Jordan's Wheel of Time series, right down to the "runes" breaking that hold evil at bay) A supporting female character who is a pushy magical world-saver, with a stolid knight at her side! (Moraine and Lan from WoT)! Heroes who must conquer inner demons before being able to fulfill their destiny! (Countless books. Countless). The female lead, grace, is marginally interesting, but the male lead is a whiny, unlikable clod. Let's see - I have the power to do just about anything in the world of Eldh, but I really want to get back to Earth, where I have no friends, no family, and run a dive bar in a flyspeck Colorado town. Yeah. I, as a reader, find that a tad unbelievable. Skip this dog. Go get a good Dave Duncan or Glen Cook.
Rating:
Summary: A standard fantasy epic
Review: Sure, this book may seem like any other fantasy series: worn out plot, many pages long, and likely to extend for more books than a reader can stomach. But this book packs real detail into every page, and the two protagonists are very human, though the peripheral characters blur a little. But what is truly irritating is the constant comparison's to Brooks' 'Shannara' books. This book and its sequels are nothing like the boring, drawn out prose of the aforementioned series. While this book could have used a better background story to explain the conflict between the Pale King and the 'good guys', it was still an interesting read. The characters might not be very original, but that should not deter a potential reader from trying this series; it's a real page-turner.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary - but not in a good way
Review: Taken one way, Beyond the Pale is an average fantasy. It's got all the hallmarks of your modern-day "epic". It runs to about 600 pages, it's the first of what will probably be a mega-volume series, and it introduces a host of characters that often, as yet, have little or no impact. Why buy it? Well, the story features a lot of action and moves along quite swiftly. You'll not be bored reading it. As long as you don't set your sights too high - this is not literature, nor even a well thought-out story - you might well like it. Taken another way, Beyond the Pale is exceptional. It is, simply put, the most derivative book written since Terry Brooks's Sword of Shannara. Anthony goes even further than Brooks: whereas Brooks copied blatantly from one source (Tolkien), Beyond the Pale is a veritable hotchpotch of derivations. For example, one of Anthony's protagonists (Travis) is simply a pale rendering of Donaldson's Thomas Covenant. Another character (Melia) talks exactly like David Edding's Polgara. At one point in the story, Anthony has a third character (the bard Falken) deliver a speech to a council of rulers which reads like a poor summation of Tolkien's Battle of the Pelennor Fields. At this junction, Anthony actually steals entire sentences from Tolkien (not to mention ideas). It's really quite remarkable. I remember that, when Terry Brooks first came along, there were those who delighted in pointing out just how unoriginal he was. Anthony should send such people into a fervor. In this sense, he's really much better than Brooks... I suspose that the bottom line is that Beyond the Pale is fun to read, whichever way you take it...
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary - but not in a good way
Review: Taken one way, Beyond the Pale is an average fantasy. It's got all the hallmarks of your modern-day "epic". It runs to about 600 pages, it's the first of what will probably be a mega-volume series, and it introduces a host of characters that often, as yet, have little or no impact. Why buy it? Well, the story features a lot of action and moves along quite swiftly. You'll not be bored reading it. As long as you don't set your sights too high - this is not literature, nor even a well thought-out story - you might well like it. Taken another way, Beyond the Pale is exceptional. It is, simply put, the most derivative book written since Terry Brooks's Sword of Shannara. Anthony goes even further than Brooks: whereas Brooks copied blatantly from one source (Tolkien), Beyond the Pale is a veritable hotchpotch of derivations. For example, one of Anthony's protagonists (Travis) is simply a pale rendering of Donaldson's Thomas Covenant. Another character (Melia) talks exactly like David Edding's Polgara. At one point in the story, Anthony has a third character (the bard Falken) deliver a speech to a council of rulers which reads like a poor summation of Tolkien's Battle of the Pelennor Fields. At this junction, Anthony actually steals entire sentences from Tolkien (not to mention ideas). It's really quite remarkable. I remember that, when Terry Brooks first came along, there were those who delighted in pointing out just how unoriginal he was. Anthony should send such people into a fervor. In this sense, he's really much better than Brooks... I suspose that the bottom line is that Beyond the Pale is fun to read, whichever way you take it...
Rating:
Summary: Very refreshing
Review: The book started out quite unexpectedly, and being a connoisseur of fantasy, and I expected that the story could not be well intergrated from such a start. Happily I was proved wrong as the story line was rescued brilliantly with a good introducton of the main charachters. I love it when the main charachters have special powers and was not dissapointed when the accident gave Travis the powers of a runelord and the discovery that Grace is a witch. A very interesting story line follows, and I cant wait till the second book "The Keep of Fire".
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