It is textured and layered, subtle at times, and yet always powerful. Janet Morris’s Beyond Sanctuary is the first volume in a trilogy that includes Beyond the Veil and Beyond Wizardwall, and the events in this trilogy take place before The Sacred Band, the magnificent novel by Janet and her husband Chris, which I previously reviewed here for Black Gate.īeyond Sanctuary is a complex novel and truly literary heroic fantasy. Love, loyalty, honor - these are the ideals by which these characters live and die. They are not only mythic heroes, they are also everyday heroes real people, everyday people who face extraordinary odds and foes… The Sacred Band has the sharp edge of reality, the harshness, the bitterness and the danger of the real world. What also rings true with the Sacred Band is their military tradition, their ethos. While the characters are larger than life, they are also richly-drawn and written with great depth of insight and humanity. This novel spoke to me on a personal level because it’s a story of pure human drama and powerful emotions. The Sacred Band is much more than great Heroic Fantasy: it is classic literature, filled with sub-plots, a fine cast of well-drawn characters, insight and wisdom and recurring themes of honor, faith, brotherhood and love. Let me start off here with a quote from my Black Gate review of Janet and Chris Morris’s novel, The Sacred Band:
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