The Warrior Heir
Cinda Williams Chima
Hyperion

Do you know that wizards, enchanters, sorcerers, and warriors, the guilds of Weir, live among us here in Northeast Ohio? Can you sense the presence of wizard stones? Will the Weir be stirred to anger now that the secret is revealed, causing their wars to escalate even though the number of warriors who can fight their battles has dwindled?

Wizardry comes to mythical Trinity, Ohio, through the storytelling skills of Cinda Williams Chima in her fantasy novel The Warrior Heir. The ordinary life of Jack Swift, a kid growing up in a small college town on the shores of Lake Erie, changes as he topples a bully on the soccer field. When he ends up in combat fresh from digging behind the grave of his great grandmother, it’s hard to tell whether the villains are overthrown by a mystical inborn power within Jack or from the finely-wrought sword Shadowslayer.

Jack will be the last to know his family history and the power into which he was born. He knows only that he feels more alive and aware now that he no longer takes his heart medication. He has no idea how the supportive watchfulness of his Weir neighbors has kept him alive during his first sixteen years. Now that he is of age, the secrets start to unfold.

Cinda Chima, a Strongsville writer, has created a magical tale of a teenager who grew up in Ohio and is forced to deal with British-born sorcery and a dangerous medieval Weir game. Cinda’s love of fantasy, genealogy, and her two teenaged boys inspired her to write a novel this entertaining and fast-paced book based upon a complicated world of magic. Until the publication of this first novel, Ms. Chima was known for her question and answer nutrition column and other articles in the Plain Dealer, Cup of Comfort essays, and professional articles and books written in her capacity as a dietician and professor at Akron University. The book’s jacket says she “comes from a long line of fortune tellers, musicians, and spinners of tales” so this Ohio grown storyteller was born to spin some intrigue for us.

The author admits she is pleased with the book design. Teenaged boys are drawn to the twisted and ruby-studded hilt of Shadowslayer on a black background. The book, published by Hyperion books for Children in New York, is beautiful.

It didn’t take an enchantress to get this book to the top of the publisher’s slush pile. The book is a good read. Librarians across the state have been recommending the book to young readers.

The characters are real—Jack’s a high school kid who wants to make the soccer team, is trying to avoid his evil-tinged old girlfriend, and is attracted to the new girl in town Ellen Stephenson. His friends Will and Finch are loyal sidekicks drawn into the war between the Red Rose and White Rose on a spooky night spent digging in a graveyard in a cemetery in a county near the Ohio River. Ellen is reserved and nondescript; but Jack wonders what’s behind her absences from school and why she is so aggressive on the soccer field. Jack’s old girlfriend may now be the bully’s girl but Leisha does not want to let go of Jack just yet.

Beautiful Linda, Jack’s aunt, lands in Jack’s life at odd moments. She knows what saved infant Jack’s life and what went wrong with the procedure. Linda keeps the secret from Jack’s eccentric mother, a lawyer and professor who trusts the doctor who saved her son’s life and makes sure Jack takes his medicine every day. Her trust is misplaced. But she never knows it.

The book moves along well. The plot carries us along without effort and the characters remain themselves throughout the book. The Warrior Heir reads like a movie, which is exactly what it needs to do in today’s world of literature. The book opened with scenes from Jack’s ancestors, foreshadowing Jack’s life a century later, and this worked well and was only somewhat confusing. The Weir came to the New World to escape the war games in the mother land. Yet the medieval war game between the Red and White Roses with its complicated rules and traditional weapons is now being fought by Americans who return to Europe for the show down. The scenes are sketchy, perhaps to keep the young reader from feeling detail-bogged, but more architectural detail and college-town energy would enhance the book.

The Wizard Heir, this book’s sequel, will be released in the spring of 2007. The release of that book may well propel sales of The Warrior Heir even higher. I hope so. Cleveland-area writers like Cinda Chima need to be discovered, published, and read. Ohio and Greater Cleveland can and should be the background of fictional action taking place on the pages of books published in New York. Check out Cinda’s well-designed website, http://www.cindachima.com, for more information on the books, the world of Weir, and the author.

Cinda Williams Chima speaks at the Westlake Porter Library's West Side Writers series on "Elements of Fantasy Writing for Adults and Teens." The event takes place Saturday, October 21 at 10:30 AM. Westlake Porter Library is located at 27333 Center Ridge Rd., Westlake. Call 440-871-2600 for more information.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia J. Taller ctallerATssd.com (:divend:)