Review by C.J. Bunce
RuneScape is the major fantasy online roleplaying game that began its massive following at the beginning of the century (at 300 million accounts the Guinness Book of World Records pegs it as the biggest MMPORG). It saw an early adaptation in a series of novels by T.S. Church that has been rekindled in Erin M. Evans’ all-new novel RuneScape: The Gift of Guthix, available now here at Amazon. In this introduction to the fantasy world of the RPG, readers meet Ilme, a sixteen-year-old girl manipulated into a key negotiation, tapped because of her early abilities with magic, to acquire the power of the runestones that are the source of the magic in her world.
Full of betrayal, power politics, and magic and sorcery that mixes the best of medieval and Renaissance-inspired warring factions and tropes, RuneScape: The Gift of Guthix is the perfect follow-up for fans of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt novels and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Set during the founding of Falador and the doomed Fremennik Great Invasion, the story follows Ilme during seven decades of rule of Asgarnia by Lord Raddallin. She is at first a pawn, sent by Endel, her master teaching her spells, to broker for access to a cave and its inhabitant, a giant frog and guardian of the “gift of Guthix.” This gift is a seemingly endless cache of powerful runes. With her talking dragon named Rue, Ilme is a reluctant spy, but she’s convinced what she’s doing will hurt no one.
Along the way she is blackmailed by a peer, Azris, and befriends Gunnar, an heir to the faction controlling the area where the guardian in the cave lives. Ilme, too, is a betrayer, switching sides and following an enticing new master named Zorya. We watch Ilme as she grows older with her newfound community–each chapter heading follows the movement of time along Raddallin’s reign.
Maneuvers and warring of the clans provides the backdrop for what is a tale of friendships, misunderstandings, and carefully laid–but unseen–plots to rule. When a trusted friend learns of Ilme’s secrets about the lies that brought her to the Wolf Clan, her world explodes, and this leads to war on a grand scale, and a rush by Ilme and those who know the runes’ power to protect all the rune mines throughout the land.
Who are her true friends? Who will be lost as she struggles to rise in her clan and grow to understand her abilities? Who will stop at nothing to seize the throne?
This new window into RuneScape would be ideal as a tie-in to Dungeons & Dragons. The citizens are primarily human, but the world has dragons and other creatures of the Tolkien variety. The community is pastoral with royal trappings, feeling like Laketown at times, other times like a fairy tale, with clans like that in Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Great Wall, and a unique world as in Warcraft or even Gears of War minus the sci-fi. Evans’ worldbuilding is spot on, the use of magic is interesting, and the characters are easy to get to know and like. This is not the heavy politics of Game of Thrones, but features likeable people, albeit a few who aren’t quite what they seem.
Fans of fantasy reads will not want to miss RuneScape: The Gift of the Guthix, available now here at Amazon.
