Ever since “Twilight,” it seems like everyone and their mother wants a piece of the vampire-and-werewolf pie. Gail Z. Martin takes it a step further, combining a whole host of fantasy clichés in her latest novel, “The Sworn.” The main protagonist is a reluctant king who happens to be the most powerful sorcerer in the land, graced with a number of rare, hereditary magical talents and inordinate good looks (complete with striking green eyes). One of his allies is a shamaness who could have stepped from the pages of a Marion Zimmer Bradley novel into her pseudo-Sioux tipi. The villain is a dark wizard who uses blood magic and tampers with tombs. And then, of course, there are vampires. And werewolves. She calls them “vyyash morn” and “vyrkin,” respectively, but that doesn’t make them any less “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob;” what saves them, barely, is that none of them are romancing teenage girls — yet. “The Sworn” is the first book in a new series, and this reader, for one, would not be surprised if Martin tossed a vampire-human dalliance into book two.

The plot is arguably even more cringe-worthy. “The Sworn” opens with a lengthy italicized prologue that is nothing more than an overly-dramatic whirlwind summary of the backstory. This reader would have been tempted to close the book then and there if she did not have a review to write. She pressed on and found the rest of the novel only marginally better. The story was repetitive, trite and poorly organized; it was, to top it all off, plagued by inherent structural problems. Martin made the questionable decision to follow multiple sets of characters in parallel, each experiencing the same threat in a different location. This can be done well — “The Lord of the Rings” comes to mind — but Martin is no Tolkien. Instead, the reader is left with the same story being told three or four times in disjointed installments, with not nearly enough variation to make the second or third retelling interesting. Add to this the unfortunate fact that the various parties are in communication throughout the story, and the author’s urge to have them exchange letters describing the events that have transpired, and the reader is left to wonder if perhaps Martin was pressed to meet a deadline, or a word count.
Ultimately, this reviewer must admit that she did not finish the book; she merely hopes that she has read and recounted enough of it to spare any other potential readers the experience.