• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Medlock Publishing
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061546047X
• ISBN-13: 978-0615460475

Synopsis: From American cardiologist Robert Louis Smith comes the unique fantasy novel Antiquitas Lost, peppered with more than 70 eye-popping illustrations by Marvel Comics legend Geof Isherwood. This epic fantasy tells the story of a 15 year old boy named Elliott, a bullied kid with deformities on his hands and feet who is uprooted from his home after his mother falls gravely ill. When they move to New Orleans so his grandfather can help care for her, Elliott learns that the old man’s eighteenth century mansion hides an ancient secret. From a dungeon-like basement far beneath the estate, Elliott strays through an ancient doorway into Pangrelor, a tumultuous parallel world full of bizarre creatures and warring races. Unable to return home, he discovers wondrous abilities he never dreamed he possessed, and an abiding connection to the primitive, alien world that will forever change him.

But he must proceed carefully. For he soon learns that his actions in the ancient world will impact the upcoming battle for Harwelden, Pangrelor’s mightiest civilization, and will also resonate all the way back to New Orleans, perhaps deciding whether his mother lives or dies.

In the many months I’ve been reviewing books for SciFi Mafia, there hasn’t been much fantasy in the mix. I’ve read horror, biographies, dystopian, urban fantasies, science fiction, but not a lot of honest-to-God quest narratives in far-off lands with strange creatures and stranger customs. Which is strange for me because, for years, fantasy was all I read. But one of the wonderful things about this gig is that I get exposed to all kinds of wonderful literature that I might not have otherwise picked up on my own.

When Antiquitas Lost showed up on my door, it was like an old friend who had stopped by after a long absence. Robert Louis Smith gets off to a rocky start in this one, but manages to tell a fairly imaginative, well-paced tale with wonderful characters in a truly unique setting. It all starts with Elliot, an outsider who get’s picked on by other kids because he’s different. Pretty cookie cutter, I know, but Smith paints Elliot as a sensitive figure of quiet strength from the outset of the novel; this direction was a nice change of pace from other authors who choose to depict their young protagonists with angst, even hostility. It’s not hard to feel bad for the kid, and by the time he escapes into the parallel world of Pangrelor where he meets his up with his adventuring party, and sets out to find his destiny in this strange new world.

The ‘meat’ of this story is very well paced, and Smith uses the party’s globe-trotting to introduce readers to his setting and history, which is familiar to anyone who is an avid reader of fantasy, while being unique in it’s own special way. Geof Isherwood‘s illustrations turn this book into a really enjoyable experience; they give the book a bit of a nostalgic quality that reminded me of the classic fantasy books of my childhood that made me fall in love with this genre in the first place.

While I brag on the pacing of the story over-all, Smith rushed things in the last 100 pages or so, rushing  certain scenes that would have better  illustrated the plight of our heroes had he slowed down just a bit. The action is largely glossed over and it lends uncertainty to the passage of time; The siege of a kingdom barely seems to last over a day.  While I found this hiccup in the book to be a little annoying, it doesn’t change the fact that I liked the book, and want to continue reading the series.Moving forward in the series, I hope that Smith takes his time with the conflict resolution.

I give Atiquitas Lost: The Last of the Shamalans Three out of Five Stars.

Pick up your copy of Antiquitas Lost: The Last of the Shamalans from Amazon.

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