This debut fantasy novel is about a world in which the "Age of Man" has begun; gone, we are told, are the elves and the dwarves, the orcs and the trolls, and all the other creatures of legend. Consider it, perhaps, a tale set in Middle-Earth many generations after the death of Aragorn, when shadows again return to Mordor but there are none to save humanity but men themselves. Only not really, because what we really need is some sort of ancient, quasi-divine sword to help us defeat the bad demon queen and her foul hench-creatures. And we may need some sort of elf to find our way through the ancient runes to get the sword, and some mysterious Entients to help us understand how to use it and . . .

Please don't get me wrong: The Crimson Sword isn't a bad fantasy novel. It's just not a great one. Instead, it features some of the paint-by-numbers elements I used to associate with my days playing Dungeons & Dragons: get a couple of heroes and send them after a powerful weapon and then kind of have them wander around fighting different people. The central character is Jarom, a young man from a remote village whose life is forever altered when his country's king is assassinated and the throne is usurped by an evil wizard. Jarom learns the unsettling truth: he is not a commoner, but actually the heir to the throne, hidden away these twenty years by his mother. The nation's armies were no match for the wizard's power, but his mother (who manages to escape the destruction of the capital city) and the village elders think he should go ask the Emperor of a neighboring land for assistance.

Jarom sets off with his buddy Allion to ask for aid in defeating the wizard. But along the way he starts thinking of the legendary Swords of Asahiel, "the divine talismans used by the elven avatars in the forging of the earth itself." While he doesn't realize it, a mysterious group of what are called Entients are subconsciously encouraging him along this route: they want to see the Sword(s) unleashed for some vague reason of their own and think he is one of the few with enough faith to see the quest through to the end. And he's really going to need the sword, because the wizard's rather small potatoes compared to the real threat: the Demon Queen Spithaera has awakened from the Abyss, and soon mankind will face the wrath of one of the ancient terrors of the world. Needless to say, they aren't going to be able to hack it when she shows up with her nasty crew and starts smashing their cities to pieces.