Wildly Crafty

Twilight of the Past is the first in a  science-fiction series by debut author Michael Parziale.  In it he introduces the reader to the world of Aldurea, which is embroiled in an ongoing and epic battle between two major powers.  The protagonist, Newl Rift, is the leader of the Guntra De who is at war with the Spero.  The war has been going on long enough that new technologies have emerged, including fabulous communications and anti-missile systems.
 
With very little preparation Newl sets off on a quest to discover the truth about himself and the truth about the war. In a typical boy meets girl story, the second half of the book consists of Newl attempting to save his love interest from certain death at the hands of the Spero, all the while fighting off doubts about the trustworthiness of his lady love.
 
This book reads like a computer game.  Newl sets off on random quests for no apparent reason; other than perhaps a mysterious stranger says that he should. He conveniently suffers from amnesia so there is no real explanation of his past.  The narrative isn’t very cohesive, the author jumps between present and past tense often in the same paragraph.  The ending is left completely on a cliffhanger with only the promise of book two.
 
This book suffers from one of the latest trends in publishing – where an unfinished story is marketed as book one of a trilogy or series.  It used to be that books were released as series’ when they were simply too huge to be a single novel (i.e. Robert Jordan “The Wheel of Time”, J.R.R Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings”) now publishers are cutting stand-alone novels into parts and calling them trilogies.  Twilight of the Past at only 224 pages is certainly not huge and it leaves the reader wondering just how many $15 episodes they are going to be forced to purchase to find out what happens next.