THE IMMORTAL TREE

Violent humans threaten a peaceful animal kingdom and its revered tree in Devon’s debut fantasy novel.

A giant tree in a “garden paradise” provides food, healing, and immortality to a kingdom of “primordial animals” living in peace under the benevolent rule of a winged, human-faced Dragon King. The peace is threatened by the advent of humans in another land as the first woman, Lilith, struggles to give birth to “the first-born child of humanity.” Assuaging her suffering with an apple from the Immortal Tree, the Dragon King exacts her promise to grant his own future son an unspecified future favor. Later, Lilith’s second-born son, Kahn, kills his older brother and lies about it; Devon paraphrases the Genesis quote, “am I my brother’s keeper?” numerous times in the narrative. Kahn founds a dynasty of violent, rapacious killers determined to take possession of the Immortal Tree and subjugate the animal kingdom. Before the final conflict, there’s a massive flood, and at the same time, humans are so murderous that “the seas turned blood red and were soon renamed the Red Sea.” The Dragon King’s son, a half-human, half-dragon “prince of peace,” marries “one of the daughters of the nicer humans” and fathers a 17-foot, angel-winged “messiah.” This novel’s concept is moderately intriguing. Readers will find that its execution, however, leaves much to be desired. There are misspellings (such as disparate for desperate and devise for device) and a jarring use of puerile terms (such as humongous and ginormous). There are also attempts at profundity that result in a muddle of truisms (“Good things come to those who wait”; “Fortune favors the bold”) and head-scratchers: “Lived spelled backward, not forward, because they believe your actions to be the sole cause of this calamity. The D before evil.”

A choppy and simplistic Bible-inspired fantasy that aspires to gravitas but falls short.