Mark T. Barnes is a clearly gifted author who has been able to create an interesting world full of numerous set pieces that would sit right at home in any epic fantasy. There are multiple races each with a deep history and culture, lost civilizations, potent magics, swords imbued with names and power, and an expansive world as well as a whole lot more. There is so much in fact that one feels let down by the minimal exposition and background provided about the world of The Garden of Stones.
The hallmarks of the epic fantasy genre are exposition in the extreme, an overdose of chainmail and a penchant to mistake themselves for cookbooks. The Garden of Stones certainly has the chainmail and ups the ante with plate and glass armors bedecking just about every character. The exposition, as mentioned before, is lacking and so are the descriptions of the food. So what makes Barnes’ book epic fantasy – neon-hued violence.
Barnes has transposed what should be a video game setting to a novel. And sadly, like too many video games, the focus has been on creating a beautiful looking yet incomplete world. The world and its systems aren’t integrated to form a cohesive substance that allows for a natural flow to be felt emanating off the page as characters and the world interact. Granted there are justifications for the existence of some beings that were created by others for a particular purpose, but the original inhabitants of the world of The Garden of Stones don’t feel any more natural. Yet Barnes has taken obvious pleasure in writing this book and its fight sequences, providing them with a vibrancy that over shadows most of the flaws of this book.
The Garden of Stones is a grab-bag of what’s cool – airships, large swords, brightly-hued armor, lost cities, ancient civilizations, epic artifacts, Machiavellian deceit, courtly intrigue, etc. The point has been made, but it would be easy to go on ad nauseum. The problems of the world even extend to the characters, who aren’t human yet there’s nothing to tell them apart. This is made all the more difficult because there are never any humans present, so the differences between the various races, beyond the two that resemble lions and horses respectfully, is little more than their names.
The characters are further troubled by a lack of believable motivation. The two protagonists each lack a valid reason for doing anything and instead must be pushed to act by others. They’re each so reactionary that it’s hard to tell if the world of The Garden of Stones is made better by their presence. The antagonist, at the very least, has a goal–two in fact–but neither explains his actions very well. Added to which, the antagonist’s sense of destiny and his justification for his action gives him a comical, megalomaniacal air rather than the malice it’s meant to impart.
The Garden of Stones comes off more like a statuary or a yard plagued by an owner’s love of garden gnomes in that it’s jam packed with little in the way of order or thought for the larger picture. The phrase “less is more” comes to mind when reading this book, though the only thing one may want more of is the descriptive battle scenes Barnes fills his book with. Sadly there’s not enough of them to help the novel overcome its other flaws.
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Review by: Gregory Pellechi
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