Title: Outlander Page: First Book of the Aethereal Knights’ Tales
Author: William Cornelison
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1-5434-4748-4
Pages: 460
Genre: Fantasy
Reviewed by: Christa Hill
Pacific Book Review
Outlander Page: First Book of the Aethereal Knights’ Tales is a tale of sorcery, magic, fame and tragedy. Van is a main character with a lot of courage and determination to become the person that he was born to be. Van learns to control his powers and becomes more aware of his identity as a capable knight throughout the first chapters of the novel. While Van is a character built out of unique conflicts and high-stakes situations, he is heavily thought based, meaning author Cornelison’s main character thinks about things rather than acting on them in more of an action packed fantasy way. This causes the reader to ponder just what Van will do and come up with alternate plots with the information which has already been given.
This novel is written with fancy vocabulary and clever concepts, allowing for plenty of verbiage and descriptions around the actual events. Van is a character that has experienced horrible tragedy after horrible tragedy, yet we rarely have a clear picture of how he is combating these difficulties. As a bit of clarity, time and location are very important in writing and this story leaves the reader guessing about both. Though the towns are all named and generally include detailed descriptions, it was difficult to tell if this story is set in the 20th century or before…or maybe even after?
Readers of the fantasy genre will enjoy Outlander Page: First Book of the Aethereal Knights’ Tales because they inherently strive to find similarities to the main characters, often so different than those we see in our daily lives. Occasionally the names of important characters were unpronounceable, a point which slowed me down when reading, and required evasion in order to continue progressing through the story. However, Cornelison does have a great talent for chapter titles, each chapter is aptly named, leaving just the right amount of cryptic to compel the reader to carry-on reading. The prologue sets up the opening of the book beautifully though I feel that the first chapter could have been more gripping.
This is the story of a young man that faces many hardships in order to embody his culture, identity, and special gifts, all the while with failure waiting at his doorstep with baited breath to ensnare him. This book has a lot of competing ideas that are very good. Van’s character is very complex and readers will find a bit of an enigma in figuring out just what he would do in future situations.
