Review of The Exodus Gate by Stephen Zimmer

When is a virtual reality machine too real? When you can see your sweat? When a massive wolf stares into your eyes and elicits extreme fear in you? When the virtual reality machine knows what colour underwear you were wearing?

Benedict Darwin is the host of a late night radio show that deals with the paranormal. With his celebrity status he gets a hold of a prototype virtual reality machine from someone inside Babylon Technologies. It is too long after that he is totally enraptured by the machine and soon finds that the virtual reality machine is really a time machine constructed by the minions of Diabolos whose intent was to bring back dead Avatars who had died from the Great Flood.

The Exodus Gate is written by Stephen Zimmer. It is his first book of the Rising Dawn Saga (also his first book period) and also the first book to be published by Seventh Star Press. Zimmer’s writing style is very to the point and forces you into the story very quickly. He doesn’t dawdle and soon after picking up the book you are right in the thick of the action. At times his dialog between the younger characters seem a bit strained but he makes up for it with the storytelling between the other races and humans. When I first started reading this book I thought ”oh god…please don’t let this be a fantasy version of eXistenZ” and I was very relieved to find out that it wasn’t. At times I had felt a character in The Exodus Gate very much akin to Paul Atreides from Dune (a book that I really like) and at other times I really did feel that the good Avatars were extremely benevolent, which is really important if you want the reader to relate to your book.

The main gripes I have with this book are not with the story or the writing itself but with the publisher. The first of them is with the pictures in the book. I have read many fantasy books before and never have I come across pictures while reading the book. At first it was just a shock and I got over it, but most of the pictures are dominated by negative colour (black), and I felt the pictures would have served a better purpose if they were sketched lightly (predominately white). Another problem I had with the pictures is that during one of my favourite passages of the book, where it talks about pureness and innocents of souls, I turn the page to see a fiery avatar with two hulking ugly guardian beasts and that put a bit of a dampener on that scene.
The second problem I have is with the publisher stating that this work is taking place parallel to our world and everything in this book is from the author’s imagination and names of things are purely coincidental. It bothers me because when you read the book you know that many events and names in the story are deliberate parallels to our world. “…the finest quality wool from faraway Nova Zeelandia”. Please I’m from New Zealand (yes it is far away), and we do produce some of the best Merino Wool in the world…coincidental I think not!

Overall I felt Zimmer did a very good job. I was first worried about The Exodus Gate being a series because it is a new author and new publisher. Many characters are introduced in this first book which can clutter the story but that is because it is the first of many. I feel that Zimmer has done well and his storytelling ability will get better with the coming books and I can see many people enjoying his twist on technology meets mythology.

Review written for Best Fantasy Books by Jon Snow from Sleeping With Books

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