The Third Sign by Gregory A. Wilson is a fantasy debut novel. It takes place in the nation of Klune. This appears to be a stand alone novel, but one in which additional stories could easily be developed. As I have said in the past, I have long been a fan of giving new authors a chance and exploring their work. After all, every author, at one point or another, was an unknown. With that said, here are my thoughts on this novel.

The overall plot of this book is slightly clichéd, in that there is a mysterious entity bent on overtaking the nation of Klune to spread its evil. If that would have been all this book was about, I would have been extremely disappointed, as that particular plot line has been done to death. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find several other sub plots woven into this story creating an engaging and worthwhile plot. Some of the things I particularly liked are the Arlic and their political situation, the subterfuge being played out in Klune Illar, a young man whose family and city have been completely destroyed must find his way in the world, and the treat of a prophecy being fulfilled and coming true. As a general rule, novels in which a prophecy is present fall short in the execution of the prophecy. This book is no different, while I knew about the prophecy during the novel, I found myself not really interested in that particular aspect of the story. It just seemed not to be needed to supplement the story. I would have liked a little more development of the Arlic plot instead of the prophecy being included. With that said, this is an engaging plot and one that held my interest. There are several scenes where the author portrayed the grim reality of war, the loss of life, destruction of property, and the general helplessness feeling. As a reader, who has read many novels with large scale battles, it was nice to see the author pay attention to the price of those battles on the people experiencing them. While there may have been a couple clichéd aspects of the plot, overall I thought it was well done and those couple things did not bog down the story at all.

The characters in this book, and there are many, are mostly well written and interesting. However, one thing that bothered me was that with the sheer number of characters present, it was hard to really connect with them on a more than superficial level. Some of the characters you can expect to read about are; Calen, Rell, Sarrtax, Senavene, Arvan, Drolnar, and many more. Calen, who is a young man whose life is destroyed by the war is the central character of the book, however, I never developed any type of caring for him. Rather, he felt like he was being dragged along through the story and not creating the story. It’s a subtle difference but I did not feel like he added much to the story, until the very end of the book. Likewise, with Rell and Arvan while they are strong characters and had a few interesting moments they never grabbed me as characters who could command a scene. The only character that really reached through the pages and grabbed me and made me want to know more about him was Sarrtax. If every character had been the quality of Sarrtax this would have been an excellent book. As it stands, the majority of the characters in the book are merely all right, they don’t make or brake the novel, but they also don’t add that extra zip that makes them memorable either.

A couple criticisms about this novel:

1 – One thing I have praised several authors for was toeing the line between describing a scene and leaving room for the reader to fill in the blanks. At times, this novel goes too far in over describing things. I really enjoy when an authors gives me enough description to see their vision, but not so much that they leave me no room to fill in details. That’s where I feel this book goes. It pigeonholes the reader into seeing one thing and one thing only. I would have liked to see a little less description for many scenes.

2 – There didn’t really seem to be much character development, aside from a couple things that would be spoiler-ish. For the most part how the characters start the book is how they end the book. There is a hint of development for Senavene, but it never seems to pan out. Aside from one major thing with Calen, he remains largely unchanged. Sarrtax, does have some development, but again not as much as I was hoping for. After finishing the book I was just left wanting something more from them.

3 – There are a couple scenes in the book where Calen reminisces about things from his past. I have no problem with these scenes, however the problem that I had was the delivery. There was no separation between ‘present time’ scenes and the ‘past’ scenes. It was awkward reading them as it was, at times, hard to determine if it was in the past or present. Maybe something as simply as symbols or italic print could have cleared it up.

Some things I liked about this novel:

1 – The Arlic race. I found myself captivated by their 10 year agreement, their code of honor, etc. I was not expecting to enjoy them nearly as much as I did. I can easily see a book, or books, written about them. I for one would read that in a heart beat.

2 – I appreciated the amount of history present in the novel. When an author lays out a backstory and history and weaves it into the main story it makes the world feel that much more real and not something that was just created to host the story. It is quite evident that Mr. Wilson put a great deal of effort into the history of this world.

3 – The humanism in the book. Characters are killed in almost every book, people are hurt in almost every book, towns are raided, razed, destroyed or what have you in many books. However, few of those books do a good job at not only showing the devastation those things cause, but also the effect it has on the people. This novel does a very good job at showing the reality of those situations. It’s nice to see that level of detail paid to something like that can easily be ignored.

Is this a perfect book? No. Is it an entertaining book? Absolutely. While I do have some criticisms about the book, they by no means bog the book down. If anything some of my criticisms are because the quality of the book is so good I maybe expected it to be perfect. The fact remains, this is Mr. Wilson’s first foray into the fantasy genre and if this book is any indication, he is in line for a long successful career. I think some of the things I didn’t like about this book other may very well like. Also, some of those things are due to this being a first novel. Regardless, when all is said and done, I can easily see myself recommending this novel to readers looking for a new author to give a chance to. I am eagerly looking forward to the next novel by Mr. Wilson.