The Gift by Patrick O' Leary
* I submitted this review to a friend of mine who was editor of a magazine. Unfortunately, publishing of the mag did not pull through. Am just placing this here for memento's sake.
Book Title: THE GIFT
Author: Patrick O’Leary
Published by Tom Doherty Associates (A Tor Book) , Fifth Avenue, New York
Printed 1997
Number of Words: 433 words
Suggestion for Title: Storytellers
“Death is the price. Magic is the gift.”
With this deceptively simple concept, Patrick O’Leary leads us right into an intricately woven tale inside tales inside tales. This book has all the elements of great fantasy interspersed throughout its pages – sorcery and shadows, greed and tragedy, and young men on a quest to save the world and their souls. But his book pushes the boundaries a little further, where the oddest characters and creatures mean the most sense. The beauty of this story is found in its rich prose and vivid description of everything that transpires in that world. It strings us along through a complex, and sometimes, tricky ride through the varying state of emotions of the main characters – loss, imitable sadness, confusion, anger and the joy of salvation.
It takes a little patience to read this book, but efforts are richly rewarded by the gems of wisdom found in so many of the little stories within the story itself. The need to savor the book gets stronger every time a page is turned, since it becomes apparent that this is not a piece of work to speed-read through. It must be relished; each word must be sampled piece by piece. The story is not in a hurry to end, for the end may just be another beginning after all.
My favorite realization in the whole book is that humans would just be animals without stories. Stories made us wonder and gave us wisdom. Stories gave us the beginnings of new yearnings and desires. Through stories, we can live many lives. It is our kind’s biggest piece of magic and it surrounds us all the time. But stories also gave us endings and our first encounter with little deaths. We began to truly understand what it means for things to come to an end. And with this book, we live and die a number of times.
As the final page is turned be prepared for the impulse to read parts of the book again. I attest that some of the stories inside are best read three times at the very least. In each rereading, something new surfaces from the lush imagery and provides us with a better understanding of what O’Leary was trying to describe to us. All in all, the world as related by the stories is ours to dream up. We are given a playground for the imagination. The deeper you delve, the more you learn how humans survived all these centuries. We are stronger because of our gift. Stories are all we have. And storytellers are who we are.
posted by Liv Burgos @ 11:17 PM
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