Back in the swirling mist of time, when humans wore little more than bear skins, and killed with stone knives, there lived a race of Elves. In this story we are introduced to an old withered man who weaves a story for his young listeners. He brings a magic to them, even as he tries their willingness to believe. Believe in what? The Kingdom of Ra-Jee that was destroyed to the point where it seemed even hope could not survive. To believe a story that brings together the humans and elves, and also the Legend of King Arthur himself, Excalibur, and the blending of humans and elves.

The story of The Season Of The Gold is a magical one. It has all the trappings of the usual fantasy, but told by a storyteller to a band of children, in a way that is refreshing and new. It brings out all the chivalry and honor one expects in such stories, as well as the sweetness and passion of new love, old bones nearing their time to die, and immortality not always seeming the easy thing to bear. It weaves the story line thousands of years older than human times, and the human animals (as elves often see humans) who lived outside of their misty world. Only to learn in their later times, when they must work with us, that not all humans are savage and some are even noble.

While this story takes on some traces of King Arthur, do not look for his knights of the round table or other such familiar story lines. This concerns two of his descendents who must go after a great evil that threatens to wipe out what is left of not only the Elven race, but the great crystal from which their power was originally drawn. By the time the heroine Ra-May is born, the Elves themselves no longer have the magic in their blood as their ancestors once did. Ra-May however is born as the old ones were. The adventures of Ra-May the elf and Michall the human Prince are laid out in this book, but conclude in another.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Season Of The Gold once I got past the first four to five chapters as the characters where much more vivid to me by then. Be patient with this book for you will find it worth your time. I look forward to reading the second installment and will report on that one as well.

Reviewed By Nancy Louise
© May 2006