The Realms Thereunder book Review

The Realms Thereunder; written by Ross L Lawhead Book One of The Ancient Earth Trilogy

Review by Steven Smith

This book was given to me for the express intent of my personal review only with no monetary gain whatsoever and is only for my review.

Ross Lawhead has taken his first step in fulfilling a fictional based storyline that I will no doubt have to read the next book called The Fearful Gates. He has a great storyline that you can relate to regarding a secret history of England and the sleeping Knights who protect the realms of ancient Earth before, during and after of any evil doing. I found myself immersed in this book for the first few chapters. I found the characters of Freya and Daniel to be compelling and well written. However, after the first 4 to 5 chapters I found myself being confused on the storyline where Freya is once in a chapter with Daniel and 2 other knights, then is all of a sudden pregnant and has a different story line altogether. I found myself disconnected with how it switched from past to present, one realm to a different realm and one story to another very distracting! I found myself being very confused between which part of the story line I was at and had to skip either back or forward to find myself figuring out where I should be.

Better timeframe negotiation and chapter development should be given to better straighten out the story as most readers I feel would be very confused in this book. I feel like Ross who although has a great storyline, needs to define the chapters and stories within stories to better give understanding of where each character is at. I think that while he definitely has a great premise for storytelling, I was let down on many occasions trying to figure out where the characters were going or coming from. Chapter formatting and development needs to be well written and chronological instead of fragmented the way this book is structurally put together haphazardly.

I would rate this book a 3 out of 5 stars for The Realms Thereunder by Ross Lawhead.

For Ross’s first book however, he as a strong writing ability that will hopefully bring more fluidity and structure to his next series of books to come.