Exile's Children

Angus Wells

Bantam Books. $12.95
(paper $5.99)

Supernatural invaders threaten their grasslands, but the People of Ket-Ta-Witko cannot unite against the common enemy. On another continent -- or possibly another world -- three people of Evander are condemned to exile and slavery, and their survival rests entirely on a young boy's prophetic dreams

Exile's Children begins another sweeping and unoriginal multi-volume fantasy epic told in two alternating, unrelated parts. The clannish, semi-nomadic People of the first plot are a shallow copy of North American plains Indians, without the vitality of a deeper, more honest portrayal. The world of the second story, which seems to use 17th century England or France for its model, is marginally more interesting; sadly, the progress of that story moves the characters to more generic fantasy hinterlands

Like many epic fantasies, especially those conceived as a series rather than single novels, Exile's Children is too long by about a third. What bits of originality do exist are lost in the padding that bulks out the novel. The two plots are unsynchronized and, except for one paragraph of clumsy foreshadowing, completely unrelated; they might have worked better as two separate books -- but probably not. Exile's Children is too much the standard fare of generic fantasy to truly entertain.

 

The Exiles Saga:

Exile's Children. Bantam, 1995
Exile's Challenge. Bantam, 1996

 

This review copyright 1996 by Wendy Morris
Information last updated March 22, 1998

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