M. D. House. Crossroads of Awakening Memory. M. D. House, 2024.

Crossroads of Awakening Memory has an obscure title. Even after reading the book, I am not sure what it means. Having said that, let me tell you what the book is really like. Imagine Starship Troopers being a fantasy novel: You have Crossroads of Awakening Memory.

Rain is a fifteen year old military trainee on the planet of Tenris. Tenris has basic medieval technology—horses and wagons, swords and shields—with a certain amount of magic. In other words, a fantasy novel setting. We mostly follow Rain as he goes through the rigors and harassment of basic training under the tutelage of famous general Ileom.

Rain is a farm boy from the outskirts of New Haven, a peaceful city that has virtually no history of any wars, like Two Rivers in The Eye of the World. Suddenly it is attacked by a well organized group of bandits or guerrillas. Even though they have not finished training, the city is forced to call up the trainees led by Ileom to fight them, not unlike the Civil War Battle of New Market where cadets from Virginia Military Academy were called up to fight a Yankee army.

With the help of an uncanny horse, Rain, Ileom, and the other trainees manage to drive back the bandits. Rumors begin coming about other attacks and uprisings in other parts of the world. Something is going on. The significance becomes even more apparent as Rain and Ileom are visited by the beautiful Antara, who has certain magic and prophetic powers.

The New Haven battle with the bandits is just the beginning of battles and wars in this book. There is a lot of action. Perhaps Crossroads is an appropriate word in the title because not only do different peoples and nations in Tenris cross paths, but soon we see, thanks to some magic keys, different planets cross paths. Communities in Tenris are attacked by warriors riding griffons and being defended by others riding dragons, neither beast being native to Tenris.

Then there are other warriors, mostly dressed in dark green and carrying fire-spitting wands, in other words, guns. A third world has crossed paths with the conflicts, namely contemporary Earth. The author shows a certain amount of humor as Rain tries to figure out what those fiery wands and noisy mechanical “beasts” from Earth are.

Without going into too much detail, it appears that the people starting the fighting have been able to travel among all three planets and have a vision not unlike that of Hitler who wanted to create a Third Empire. There are also some people—from Tenris and not from Earth—who have special healing abilities, again reminiscent of other fantasy tales. So just as Starship Troopers involves an attack from another world, so does Crossroads of Awakening Memory. Just as Johnny Rico in that novel learns from a wise and experienced mentor, so Rain learns from both Ileom and Antara—not to mention a horse and a dragon.

One warning: This book is the first in a new series, and the book does not complete the tale. In other words, it is more like The Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord Of the Rings rather than The Eye of the World in The Wheel of Time. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means we will have to wait to find out what happens next.