The Road of Silk starts out like every other fantasy story. Our heroine Yasamin is lost and alone, on her way to a political marriage to save her country. The way is fraught with dangers; like every other heroine, she becomes aware of her hidden talents along the way and is so pure of heart that her initial enemy befriends her.

The tale itself is rather simple, and is full of interesting ideas. But the lack of copyediting can get very distracting. Without terminal punctuation, it is sometime jarring to read conversations running into actions without a clear marker between the two. The end of the book itself is rather abrupt, as though the authors cut the story short. Yasamin spends a good portion of the book learning about her heritage and the road of silk. When she does finally learn its secrets, they are hardly as surprising or as unexpected as the authors seem to want to make it. Twists are a little predictable, especially to those familiar with the fantasy genre. Some of the characters are rather flat and predictable as well: the selfish King, the crafty Queen, supernatural evil creatures working to take over the world. Even standard fare can be treated well if there is depth to the characters, and there is very little of that here.

The book is a decent effort in the fantasy genre, which generally does not receive as much attention as other types of fiction. The story is easy to get into and is entertaining, and you will care about a few of characters over the course of the story. It doesn't create something new or exciting within the fantasy genre, and there will be a sense that the book is unfinished when you read the last chapter. And if you're anything like me, you'll be sorely tempted to grab a pen and fill in the terminal punctuation yourself.

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Review by Susan Kling Monroe

The Road of Silk by Matt Afsahi and Barbara Dysonwilliams contains the germ of a good idea and the traditional elements of a hero tale. And with a good editor, the authors might be able to bring about a good story.

The characters consist of the standard beautiful Queen who is automatically loved by all whom she meets, the handsome Prince of another land, the evil King of a far land that the queen is being forced to marry for the good of her people, the Harsh Soldier who falls in love with the Queen while he carries her to his King, the jealous First Wife who is plotting to destroy her competitor, two really nasty Evil Villains and their unattractive henchmen, the traditional Wise Old Magician, and the Infant Pawn. The villains have been physically marked by their dealings with Evil. All perfectly good elements if used correctly.

The book follows Queen Yasamin of Gwendomere as she is escorted through assorted magical and inconvenient dangers to marry King Amir of Dragonval. In exchange the King will not destroy her kingdom or slaughter her peaceful subjects. In the meantime, there are various people in Dragonval who want her dead, including First Queen Medusimia, Vulmire, the first Evil Villain to be introduced, and the secret second Evil Villain who wants to kill Yasamin in person.

Of these stereotypes we are expected to root for the Prince, Arash of Pars, without any real characterization being done (aside from weak descriptions of how handsome he is). He immediately captures the heart of the beautiful Queen. This reader was hoping she would wise up and go for the Harsh Soldier, Goliagoth, instead.

Queen Yasamin does not have much personality in the beginning, but she does gradually grow. She is nicely responsible and good in the face of overwhelming treachery and evil. Yasamin carries a book left by her dead mother, the relic of an ancient enlightened race, the Gwendoshar, which could be an agent of change and growth. It instructs in "The Road of Silk" of the title, a pathway to magic and power that can take the reader physically to another world. Instead it becomes a convenient deus ex machina when times get rough.

Yasamin's interactions with the stalwart "Demolisherian" (General) Goliagoth are better written than most of the other relationships, and this is one of the most interesting threads in the story. We are told that King Amir is harsh and dictatorial, but mostly we see him attending to bureaucratic paperwork and shouting at his original wife, Medusimia. There's not much foreplay in the sex between the Jealous Wife Medusimia and Evil Villain number one Vulmire. They do spend a lot of time coupling violently.

Halfway through the book we are suddenly introduced to Evil Villain number two, and then begins much ominous forced foreshadowing as well. Queen Yasamin handily uses her magic book to escape the worst tortures, but of course always comes back to face the danger.

Unfortunately, there are all too many problems that detract from the good idea, a way of life that rewards positive growth with access to a wondrous Promised Land (misspelled Promise Land in the book) through study of the Queen's artifact. The Book cannot be understood unless the reader is totally focused on doing good for others. Although you can get a sense of what they were trying for, the writers never actually accomplish what they set out to do. The book is just not well written. Bad spelling, misuse of words, poor grammar, and missing punctuation mar it.

Incorrect punctuation can be found in all books outside of the Gutenberg Bible, but here the lack of quotation marks ending spoken pieces leads to confusion in the middle of a conversation. Other ending punctuation is also missing. I am surprised that a quick "spell check" didn't catch the majority of the punctuation and grammar errors.

Good writing involves choosing the best words to convey meaning and build the story. Here sentences are not clear and do not flow, cluttered with unnecessary, often arbitrary words that repeat or over explain. This brings the story to a halt. Frequently words are misused, for example the use of virile to describe a disease instead of virulent in the sentence, "The Queen had died seven long years ago, killed by a virile wasting disease that had racked her body and slowly destroyed her beauty."

Dialogue is poorly written and uninteresting. Frequently it's an excuse for long and tedious exposition that could have been presented in other formats. Characters who start out speaking with extreme formality suddenly acquire a folksy, informal turn of phrase in the last few chapters for no explained reason. Current slang intrudes on the "ancient" setting, as well.

World building is a difficult task. Fantasy writing is all about creating another place, different from our own but familiar enough that the reader will be drawn into action. An author must choose wording that sets the stage correctly and prepares the reader to become part of the tale. Masters like Frank Herbert and J. R. R. Tolkien created languages that flavored their stories, based enough on Earthly speech that the alien words did not interrupt the epic. Tolkien was a language expert at Oxford, and it's no surprise that his languages worked. The "languages" of The Road of Silk do not. Although the jacket biographies describe experience with languages by both authors, none of that is apparent in the speech of Gwendomere and Dragonval, which is an uncomfortable incoherent mishmash of bad pseudo Latin and "fantasy speak" that, again, stops the story dead. The use of the word "windbloea" in a spell to sink a ship at sea with a storm is just not believable.

The book stops at a cliffhanger, and it is obvious that Book Two cannot be far behind. Really, I am interested in seeing where they go with this, but the authors would do well to ditch the "fantasy language" names and spells they are attempting, spend more time on the elements of good writing, and work more on making the main characters people we truly will want to succeed in the end, not because they're the heroes and we're told we should, but because we've grown to care for them through watching their growth as people.

TurnKey Press, 2004: ISBN 0-9747644-6-9