Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Pilgrimage

AUTHOR:  Kim Fielding

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH:  200 pages

BLURB: Fiscal analyst Mike Carlson is good with spreadsheets and baseball stats. He doesn’t believe in fate, true love, or fantasy. But then a fertility goddess whisks him away to another world. A promise has been broken, and if Mike is ever to return to California—and his comfortable if lonely life—he must complete a pilgrimage to the shrines of a death goddess.

A humiliating event convinces Mike to hire a guard to accompany him, and hunky Goran is handy enough with a sword, if a little too liberal with his ale. A man with no home and no family, Goran is deeper than he first appears. As Mike learns more about Goran, his disbelief wavers and his goals become less clear. Contending with feuding gods, the challenges of the journey, and his growing attraction to Goran, Mike faces a puzzle far harder to solve than simple rows of numbers.

REVIEW:  

Mike is a spoon.  Ok, he’s not a spoon–but he’s like a spoon.  A spoon that has an identical mate.  An identical mate, in an alternate universe, that has really pissed off a god.  So now Mike—the not-quite the spoon you’re looking for—must undertake a pilgrimage to unbend a goddess and save a bunch of people from never dying.  And he must do it all…in his pants! (that’s underwear for all ye heathens out there).

Got that?  Err…let’s try it again…

Mike is a fiscal analyst (don’t ask me what that is, I have a feeling it has to do with numbers and maths and just thinking about it makes my head hurt), and while it is not exactly the most exciting job in the universe, he is damn good at it.  He’s a good man, with a good family, and he’s got his head screwed on tight.  So tight, in fact, that it nearly pops off when Agata, goddess of fertility, pops in, tells him he’s just what she’s looking for in a hero/savior/last-ditch effort at a loophole, and then pops them both over to home sweet Dalibor.  She explains that Lord Maliach has pissed off her sister god, Alina, and now refuses to apologize–even after the goddess of death cursed Maliach and his lands with immortality (in a total, sure your leg just fell off and you’re in excruciating pain, but look on the bright side, you’ll never die!, kind of way).  Agata, not exactly cool with the whole punish the herd for one jackass’s stupidity thing (and more than a little pleased to trick her sister) tells Mike that because he is Maliach, in an alternate universe, he can make the apologies for the ass of a lord.  He is like one spoon, in a set of cast spoons–alike enough in shape and form to fool/loophole his way through the rules governing the gods.

So with a set of stolen clothes, a bag of a very few coins, and the least helpful guide-book ever, Mike sets off (is forced) to undertake a pilgrimage in a strange land, with strange gods and even stranger people.  Like it or not (not!), Mike is now a hero.  A very reluctant spoon-hero.

You know that type of story you love, the one that you go out of your way to read, but it almost always disappoints you?  That is this story–minus the disappointment.  I love the whole ‘average-joe falls into another universe’ trope.  But rarely is it ever good.  At best, they tend to be mediocre clichés wrapped around highly improbable characters.  And yet I keep reading them, in the vain hope that one day someone will actually write something that I’ll love.  Well, it has taken 27 years, and who-knows how many bottle of wine, but ladies and gentlemen, I give you the winner: Pilgrimage!

I loved this book.  Mike is just average.  He’s an accountant that is a good man, if a little lonely in the romance department, but he is not a superhero in disguise. Mike does not moonlight as a sword-wielding ninja, he’s not a fantasy junkie that’s fully equipped to take on any adventure, and he’s not spent the last ten years studying hunting and gathering, so that he’s so at home in the wild he’d give Bear Grylls a run for his money.  He’s an average guy, thrown out of everything he knows, and forced to make the best of it.

So it is probably good that he runs into Goran…because let’s face it, you can’t really fiscaly analyze your way out of a sword fight.  Goran is a good man, who has had a pretty messed up childhood/adulthood, and now basically only wants to have enough money to drink himself into a hazy stupor for as long as humanly possible.  He is also rather impressive with his blade. ;P  He is both gregarious and quiet, at turns, and is probably not the smartest man alive, but he is sweet and he cares for Mike–even when Mike does a stupid thing.  I really loved him.  And I loved how Fielding made him feel alive and real.  How his past made him into something more than just a blade for higher.

Mike and Goran could have come out sounding like every bad cliché, but they didn’t.  They were all the good things that made clichés clichéd–that made them so damn popular.  Man trapped in foreign land, falls for romance-cover-worthy hunk of a man….it should feel flat, but it is not.  It is romantic, and cute, and just a little sad.  Because Mike’s not staying, and Goran–who lost everything but is now finally starting to find some peace–is going to once again have his heart ripped out of his chest, by something he cannot stop.  The story doesn’t exactly flounder around in angst, but you never quite know how it will end, giving it enough tension that you are eagerly awaiting each new page.

But no matter how unsure you are about some things, others are quite certain.  Like the fact that his book was a pleasure to read.  It was funny.  It was fun.  The jokes found that perfect spot where you never quite knew what to expect to come out of Mike’s mouth, but it never felt like he was saying it just to get a laugh.  The pop-culture references could have fallen flat, very easily, but they were well chosen and perfectly timed.  Never too much, and just enough to get the meaning without confusing us, or beating us over the head with it.  It was both unexpected and highly believable.

I do have some issues with how the book ended–mostly that I wanted to see more about how everyone was coping–but it was a really good book, nonetheless.  I think Mike let go a little too easily, even if I understand the choice he made, but I think I would have liked for him to fight a bit harder for Goran.  But I got my HEA, and really enjoyed reading this.  I’ve no doubt it is going to pop up on my re-read list, either.  If you are looking for a low-angst book, full of fun and romance, this is the book for you.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Dreamspinner  ::  Amazon  ::  ARe