Legacy of Seven

One of the remarkable things about genre fiction is that it can blend so well. Why have a straight fantasy novel when you can mix it with science fiction or horror? How far are we as a human race from backsliding to a medieval style life? A few dirty bombs, no electricity, and some passing decades and all of sudden we are back living in a feudal society, all be it with some technology lying around the place that no one can remember how to work. What if some people did still know. Would they be seen as all powerful wizards? Would they want to be Gods. P J Flie explores this idea in Legacy of Seven, the first in the new A Guardian Rises series. 

Ondreeal is a simple farmhand who works the land for her adoptive father. It is a hard life, but all she knows. When she is sold into slavery, she soon discovers a side of her that was hidden, even to herself. She has the power to control weather and strike those around her down. Suddenly, she is seen as a Wizard and there are only a few of those that remain. Ondreeal is needed to fight against the aggressive dark Wizard Zairoc who seeks world domination. Unbeknownst to all of them, high above the clouds a series of platforms in space await the return of humans to work them. One robot, CD-45 is tasked with finding some person to help. 

Setting a fantasy novel in the future is fascinating as it automatically becomes a form of science fiction. How can you have the swords and sandal style of low fantasy or wizardry of high in a world with technology? It can happen. Just witness our own past, when the Romans left Great Britain, we descended into the Dark Ages. The lessons learnt from the likes of Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians all forgotten for centuries. In 400 years', time, people may forget what a mobile phone is, especially if no one has been able to use one for 350 years. 

Therefore, Ondreeal finds herself in what is a fantasy setting and her tale follows the path of many a book one. A young protagonist discovers they are more than they appear and must learn to be a hero. What the future setting allows is for Flie to question were Ondreeal’s powers come from. What is her wand and how come a few other wizards exists who seem to have lived for centuries? There is more mystery and depth here than your average fantasy and Flie is not telling all in book one. 

Although Ondreeal is arguably the main character, it is an ensemble piece. Chapters also follow Sir Francis a ‘good’ wizard, Zairoc the dark wizard, Trick Mark a soldier with strange powers and most left field of all CD-45 a robot. CD-45's presence in the book does not suddenly throw the novel into a science fiction spiral, but he is absorbed into how humans now view the Earth. He is seen as one of the fairy folk sent to aid them.  

A dystopian miasma permeates the book and blends the fantasy and the science fiction seamlessly. Legacy is at its core a fantasy novel that follows that genre but has plenty of science fiction elements to it. Flie has many options to take the series. Continue to follow a fantasy path or explore the science. There is so much unsaid throughout this first outing that as a reader you are unsure of what direction would be best. Do the likes of Sir Francis know more than they are willing to tell the people and is there a far larger threat to the planet that stretches beyond the stars themselves? It will be fun finding out.