Stolen Lives (The Underhill Chronicles #1)

This was a high action tale with almost no pauses in the action from the first moment when Caleb is mysteriously grabbed through a mirror to the end when there is a desperate fight to hold the gate while Caleb and his friends escape from the mysterious Fae and their “Underhill” lands.

But that was the problem. Character took a backseat to the frantic nature of the constant action. We get to meet many characters by name, but their personalities never got a chance to come through. Instead we had to deal with an endless description of fights and then frantic action to recover from fights, run away from fights, plan for future fights, etc.

Fights are interesting, but they can’t be the only part of the tale and in this story that’s what it seemed the story became. There just wasn’t much character in this despite the huge cast.

Its not otherwise bad, but it had soo much potential and that potential felt wasted by the overly simplistic plot that had nothing but action and little time to reflect on building up the rest of why everything was happening.

Fun, but I have to give this just 3 stars. It should have and could have been a lot better with more interludes to establish characters.

Wow, Caleb our main protagonist is kidnapped and dragged to Underhill where he finds himself hurt, trapped and enslaved in an old-school like D&D game… where the only sure thing, is death!
It’s a fight or “perma-die” situation, and the action is turned all the way up to 11, complete with brain matter spewing out the back of an unfortunate head or two!!! Caleb, has just one thing on his mind: to change the odds, and turn the tables on the Fae and escape! Something he can’t do without the help of his pack mates!
And, yes! I loved it! I guess I saw to many Samurai movies in my formative years! LOL
The narrator Angelo De Loreto did his job admirably, and I was so wrapped up in the story I lost track of him as “the narrator”. Ya gotta be doing real good to accomplish that!
If I had any complaint, it would be about the abrupt ending (Not that it wasn’t good, mind you)… I guess I’m just the type of reader that perfers the book to close with more of a denouement!

I just couldn’t get into it. I read to about 30% and had no desire to continue. That said, it seemed to be fairly well written, but not to my taste. Tom out

I’m really looking forward to the second one. I thought I might be a bit lost with only a passing knowledge of Dnd and rpg games but even without understanding the stats portion, I got lost in the great world building. It was as if the the underhill was its own character and dragged me into the story.

I really enjoyed the descriptions and I believe my favorite was when Caleb was given his MRE with the dessert taken out…that’s a special sort of torture within itself.

An updated Rip Can Winkle type story. Just set into modern times rather than old New York. Definitely not crunchy, but an excellent read.

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