Paladin by Dave Luckett

“Good if they were good, but they weren't always good... Power goes to most people’s head, you know.” (p. 27)

Paladin by Dave Luckett is the exploration of truth and justice by placing the protagonists into fantasy second dimension/world. Sam and Finny live as outcasts in their city, until they find out that they belong to another world. Both Sam and Finny have magical talents that are needed in to fight evil in another land.

Firstly, the novel was a pleasant short read but it wasn't a great book. Paladin isn't bad but it isn't very good either, it’s just mediocre. While, I enjoyed the hour or two it took me to read I wouldn't recommend this book, simply because there are other fantasy novels that are better. The main reasons for this were that it was very brief and unoriginal. However, there were some nice themes investigated.

The whole story could have fitted into a trilogy, the fact that it was only set out in under 300 pages meant it was very brief and had a lack of description. I’m sure that Luckett had a great idea in his mind about the whole fictional world; however it didn't transmit into ink and left me wondering a whole lot about how the planet worked. There were a lot of history, politics, characters and monstrous beings introduced but none of them were explained properly. Whenever Sam asked for a description of something, it seemed that it was, “too hard to explain”. Luckett set it out so that the narrator, even though it was in 3^rd person, didn't know anymore than Sam and only followed Sam’s point of view, leaving the readers with only as much knowledge as Sam; in other words, the reader was left quite uninformed.

(SPOILERS!!) 

Now, not many stories nowadays are original and that’s okay because the best books just take old ideas and present it in a new form. For me, Luckett didn't do much with the plot and it seemed a very typical youth story about parallel universes or a fantasy world. It was just another story where outcast characters are transported to a fantasy land where they become special and even though they have never been trained they are more powerful than everyone else and have the skills to fight evil. Even the “plot twist”, wasn't a big twist for me. When Finny found there was no real castle and there was no one even living in the dark kingdom, there was obviously something wrong and the easiest person to blame was exactly who was to blame, the Archmage – who was someone that had quickly risen to power, from the mysterious deaths and disappearances of the king and his son. Again, this is probably due to the fact that everything was so brief and there was no time to add more to the plot.

So far I have only bashed this book but there was one thing I really liked about it and that was the idea of justice, fairness and a Paladin. The whole book was about Finny and Sam trying to fight for the truth; the real truth, not just the truth told by the corrupted rich and powerful. I loved it when the the Archmage (I think that’s who said it) and the council were talking and they shocked that lawyers were held responsible for the judging of what is right and wrong when lawyers are actually there to manipulate the law and not to find the absolute truth. (sorry, I couldn't find the actual quote). I have nothing against lawyers, and I’m sure most are trying to do what’s right. However, like the quote I used at the beginning of this review, “power goes to most people’s heads...”, and this is absolutely true. Power and money can get you lawyers to spin the technicalities of the law to make the guilty innocent and the innocent guilty. Also, I completely agreed with Sam when he said, “He knew what was right, and it had always bothered him that other people didn't, or didn't care, or didn't care enough.” (p. 23). Everyone has different morals and ideas of what is right and wrong but there are some things like crime and corruption that are completely wrong and it be hard to find someone who didn't agree, but it is also very easy to find hypocrites that do the exact thing. I think it was also very smart of Luckett to place Sam as a ‘paladin’, because we knew that he only told the truth and he always knew when something was right and wrong and so the reader could understand what the real right and wrong were in the two worlds and most important could then believe Sam and empathize with him.

So, if you read until the end, congrats! :P To sum it all up, the book, Paladin by Dave Luckett, was alright; it was just average. And even though it was too brief and unoriginal, Luckett brought a few good ideas and themes that should be discussed more often in books and everyday life.