TYME OF NOW (Michael Walsh)

In today's hi-tech environment there is little opportunity for teens to exercise their imaginations.  The Internet, Smart phones, and video games provide instantaneous 24/7 access to entertainment and social networking, a veritable kaleidoscope of ideas, colors and sounds, all available at the push of a button or the flick of a switch.  Sometimes it seems like technology has eradicated any need for personal creativity, which brings me to what I consider to be the strongest element of Mike Walsh's latest fantasy, Tyme of Now: room for imagination.

Mike's writing style is clean and precise, not excessively embellished.  The tone is gentle and the story is character-driven.  He provides basic descriptions of his characters: age, hair and eye color, height, and build and establishes relationships and necessary background information while clearly defining who is good (Nathan, Tyme, Clara), who is bad (Clarence, Corwin), and what motivates his characters.  We kind of know (or hope) early on who is going to win in the end because of their innate goodness, but that's OK because we immediately care about Mike's characters and we WANT good to triumph over evil.  From the first page the reader understands that there is trouble brewing, that old conflicts between the Kingdoms of Now and Gorin are going to be resolved very soon, and that it might be bloody.  If this were a feature film we could just sit back and relax waiting to be bombarded with glorious battle scenes, gore, and special effects, with perhaps a love scene or two thrown in for effect, but I think we might miss the point.

Here, of course, there ARE the requisite menacing bad guys, exciting super powers, a grueling training regimen for wizards called the Gauntlet, and a few scary fireballs thrown in the heat of battle, all the stuff you'd wish for in a decent fantasy (especially those fireballs!).  One of the best examples of how Mike nurtures the reader's imagination is during the Gauntlet sequence.  All we know about this sequence of challenges is that every time a trainee fails they emerge soaked with water.  The point is not to showcase the physical challenges of the course or to focus on competition among the trainees, but to illustrate the loyalty, discipline, and common goals of the participants.  Of course I did find myself wondering what they were doing (scaling rock walls?  target shooting?), but I think that focusing on "what" instead of "why" would have detracted from the characters. This section  reminded me a bit of the author's autobiographical "Eddie's Method," an exercise in character-building.

As I also observed in reviewing one of Mike's earlier novels,  a lot of the action takes place between the lines. The reader is given the opportunity to imagine, to see the story unfold in their mind's eye instead of being slapped in the face with a plethora of details.  I have nothing against richly embellished prose; in fact, I often love it, but there is something very positive to be said about a more minimal approach. When it comes to fantasy, an author has a choice of making a work exclusively his own or allowing his readers to share in developing some aspects of the story through their own imaginations.  Mike Walsh provides an opportunity for his readers to share in the creative process with him by creating a group of intriguing, well-defined characters in an appealing setting, making us care about them, and letting us fill in some of the details on our own.  Interactive reading helps to build imagination and creativity.  This is a great thing!