"The three of them agreed, despite what the incident told them about the horses, they could never let anybody else know they'd come that close to killing the prince."
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Promised Valley Conspiracy by Ron Fritsch Asymmetric Worlds
book review by Omar Figueras
A story of chivalry, honor, competition, and respect enveloped in druid-like cultures on prehistoric Earth is the essence of Promised Valley Conspiracy by Ron Fritsch. There is a traditional, epic tone to the book that is reminiscent to Homer's Iliad or Odyssey. It is a story whose firm, relentless action is the narrative drive of this novel.
The third in a series four, this book fascinates with pages filled with excitement and drama. Fritsch has created a wide array of characters and progressively develops them throughout the series, and in this book the author included a chart (along with a plot spoiler alert) at the end of the novel in order to keep this large and ever-expanding pantheon cohesive.
The characters' nomenclature is derived from nature and their culture of respect. The characters bear names as tributes to things found in nature and natural phenomena–flowers; rivers; lightning; times of the day, night and seasons of the year–along with values and ideals held by this animist society.
There is a school of thought that holds fantasy and science fiction genres as anthropological metaphors utilized to critique our social order through this sort of fantastic story. Fritsch's world is one filled with wondrous surprises, where there are no damaging thoughts among the people toward same-sex unions. In fact, there is a whole group of sages who carry the stories and traditions of their people, and this group is strictly engaged with members of their own gender. It's refreshing to see the disappearance of negative cultural trappings found in today's world.