Sharon Hinck, The Restorer

The Restorer

Sharon Hinck

Navpress, May 2007, 425 pp.

ISBN 1600061311

Susan Mitchell is feeling overwhelmed by the demands of her children and those she makes on herself. Her husband Mark built a getaway for Susan in their attic, but the first time she enters she hears voices before being pulled through a portal into another world. She sees a knight kill a person and realizes she isn't in Kansas anymore. Although the knight is mistrustful of her, he takes her under his wing and brings her to his clan in Braide Wood.

She learns she is in the realm of the Children of the Verses, a group of twelve tribes which believe in the one. They are under attack from many fronts, as Hezon wants to expand and assimilate the Children of the Verses into their own empire and they give the people an ultimatum that they can't possible meet. They can get weapons but they can't use them because on the records and in the songs the voice the One says his people can only do battle with swords and the Verses. Cameron the head councilman of the tribes wants to use the sync beam even though it is forbidden and he has allowed the Rhusicans to enter the tribal lands. They invade people's minds and poison them in some way so they turn from the One. Susan discovers she is the new Restorer sent by the One with enhanced powers to save his people. She hopes when the time comes she will have the courage to do so.

The world that Susan enters is full of high technology superior to Earth's, but its people have the same feelings, needs and hopes as they do in our own world. The people are waiting for their Deliverer while in our own world the Savior is believed by many to have come. There are plenty of surprises in this inspiring novel. The heroine is courageous and vulnerable at the same time in this new world where she has a connection with the One. Fantasy fans will thoroughly enjoy this exciting and character-driven high fantasy tale.

Harriet Klausner