Author: Bruce Paul

Title: Artama & The Watchtower Portal – The Second Journey

Subject: Fiction

Release Date: Available now

Reviewer: Michellle Hunter

Paul does an extraordinary job at creating a fantasy world, where young Artama is surrounded by dragons, soothsayers, extraterrestrials, just to name of few. You are immediately drawn to this young man, and the devastating prophecy from which he has no other option but to fulfill. The book was crafted for the young adult reader who loves epic stories with a sci-fi/futuristic twist. The book is anything but predictable and you will find yourself rooting for Artama during all his conflict episodes. Artama takes on the responsibility of challenging the old prophets and finds himself having to save his town from a horrific fate. Follow the story and you are left with a cliffhanger that will nag at you until you read book 3.

The story is told from a 3rd person point of view, which rewards us with great descriptive passages from all characters. Paul does an excellent job at describing Artama’s world and his feelings throughout the book. There are various writing styles present. The book begins almost with a biblical feel to it. There is beautiful poetry sprinkled throughout the novel. But at the same time Paul recognizes the need to pull the reader to the present with a modern tongue, and presents an easy flow to follow.
The story line is well put together. I almost got a Harry Potter/ Percy Jackson feel when Artama was exposed to the academy and everything it had to offer. I love the idea of an earth 1 , 2 and three, and these individuals trying to correct the mistakes of previous civilizations on other like planets. I’m extremely curious to see Artama’s fate in book three and how some of the supporting character will correlate in the third book’s storyline.

The one thing that kept nagging at me during the story was the presents of redundancy. There were several poems, descriptive passages and ideals that were repeated throughout the book, sometimes exceeding three times. It was a little overwhelming. This surfaced throughout all writing styles present. Maybe if the redundancy was allocated to just the one writing style, that would have been more receptive. Other than that I really had nothing else to complain about. Bruce Paul is a very talented writer and story teller and I can’t wait to read book 3 when it comes out.