Prophecy

By: Ellie Dolan-Yates

In Volume 4 of The Wizard Hall Chronicles by Sheryl Steines, Annie Pearce finds out that she is part of a prophecy that will change her life. With the help of her friends and colleagues at the Wizard Guard, she finds herself having to travel back in time to ninth-century England to save the Vikings, the coven and her world as she knows it. Of course, she faces many a dilemma that comes with time-travel and what can and can’t be done in order to protect the future.

At the start of the book Annie, who is a witch working for the Wizard Guard, finds out a shocking secret about her mother. In the midst of trying to figure out what this secret means she is embroiled in a case which concerns a creature that is half human and half demon. Oh, and it also regenerates no matter how many pieces it is blown into! It is during this case that she realizes what the secret about her mom really means and that she is part of a prophecy that only she can fulfil. As more of the prophecy is revealed Annie learns that she may have to put herself and her friends at risk in order to save their future and life as they know it. However, despite Annie and her friends being outstanding members of the Wizard Guard, things aren’t easy at all. There is a reward for Annie once she has fulfilled the prophecy, but at what cost?

What I like about Steines’ creation of this magical world is that it is not another time. The witches and wizards live in our own world, amongst “nonmagicals.” They live as we would and lead what we would see as “normal” lives – except they have the ease of teleporting upstairs rather than walking and summoning objects rather than going to get them. This makes for an easy read without having to imagine a whole other world which could seem far-fetched. It makes the story more real and the characters’ lives more relatable – as relatable as witches and wizards can be.

Upon Annie’s first realization of the prophecy things seem fairly simple. Annie and her friends and family seem to work out what needs to be done quite quickly and there isn’t too much mystery placed on how she needs to fulfill the prophecy. Aside form certain characters not wishing to reveal much, I didn’t feel too much anticipation in the build up to Annie starting her journey to the past. I guess the characters who work at The Wizard Guard do an impeccable job, but I didn’t feel too much on the edge of my seat whilst everything was being worked out.

That being said, I haven’t had chance to read the books preceding this one, therefore for avid fans of The Wizard Hall Chronicles may be shocked at what comes to light. Without having read the previous installments I could tell that a lot of unknown background information about certain characters was coming to light. So, for fans of Steines’ series, this book is a must read! I think a lot of things will start to make sense in this tome.

Earlier I mentioned that I didn’t feel much anticipation leading up to Annie going to fulfil the prophecy. However, the last few chapters of the book were very tense! Whilst back in the ninth century, Annie and her friends had to fight more than just regenerating demons. This set up some tense moments towards the end of the book as the reader wonders whether Annie has completed her mission or not and whether she will return at all.

Unfortunately, and this falls down to the editors as well as the author, there are a few grammatical errors and missing words. An occurrence of word omission appears on page 90: “Annie asked Lial as scried for the Viking using his leather belt.” There is also the omission of the word “is” from the first sentence of Chapter 16. Grammatical errors come in the form of a double negative on page 250: “Had they done their job, none of this wouldn’t have happened.” I feel like here Steines, or someone in editing, had a change of mind about whether to use “this wouldn’t have happened” or “none of this would have happened.” Also, on page 265 a character asks: “Where do you think you are doing?” since this is followed by “Do you really believe you can get her out of here?” it left me wondering whether the character was asking what Annie was doing or where she was going. I only read the book once and noticed these errors straight away, so I feel like they should have been noted by somebody before going to print. However, these slight mistypes didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book. I just guess as a writer I’m always on guard for these sorts of mishaps!

All in all, Prophecy is a great read. The only faults I really found with it were to do with editing. Sheryl Steines used extremely descriptive language throughout and utilized a lot of description when it came to characters executing menial tasks as well so that the reader can get a clear image and almost feel as if they are watching what is happening rather than reading. This is something that I, personally, really like in a book. Prophecy ends on a massive cliff-hanger as well, which will leave The Wizard Hall Chronicle fans and myself eagerly anticipating Volume 5!