The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

Summary from GoodReads

The first time his father disappeared, Tucker Feye had just turned thirteen. The Reverend Feye simply climbed on the roof to fix a shingle, let out a scream, and vanished – only to walk up the driveway an hour later, looking older and worn, with a strange girl named Lahlia in tow. In the months that followed, Tucker watched his father grow distant and his once loving mother slide into madness. But then both of his parents disappear. Now in the care of his wild Uncle Kosh, Tucker begins to suspect that the disks of shimmering air he keeps seeing – one right on top of the roof – hold the answer to restoring his family. And when he dares to step into one, he’s launched on a time-twisting journey- from a small Midwestern town to a futuristic hospital run by digitally augmented healers, from the death of an ancient prophet to a forest at the end of time. Inevitably, Tucker’s actions alter the past and future, changing his world forever.

My Review:

For a book that took forever to get actually moving, I was actually surprised at how disappointed I was in The Obsidian Blade. Here’s what my journey through this story looked like.

Confusion: First – a completely strange, utterly alien world was introduced. Fine, that I can deal with. But then it was shoved into a closet and I was thrown into a reality that, honestly, sent me back to the internet to find out what was going on with this books genre classification. It seemed like a typical, young adult, non-science-fiction book. But nope.. after what seemed like forever, I was thrown back into the science fiction realm.

Disbelief: Not only were historical events not sacred (World Trade Center) but religious stories were pulled into the mix and treated with a heavy hand. It’s one thing to express disbelief in the stories that are the foundation of a religion, but using them as a catalyst to make the story seem more interesting? Not cool – especially since it completely felt as if the stories were being used for mere shock value.

I was disappointed in this series, and definitely will not be investigating the rest of the trilogy. The science fiction elements seemed to be implemented merely as an excuse to use past events in a novel, and, as a result, were not very fleshed out in and of themselves. There was virtually no world building, no explanation other than a few vague paragraphs about the diskos, and no resolution of any sort. I understand it’s the first book of a trilogy, but you have to throw your reader a bone, you know? Make the book worth reading now, rather than having to wait.

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