The Paladin Prophecy (The Paladin Prophecy Book 1) by Mark Frost

Book Review

Title: The Paladin Prophecy (The Paladin Prophecy Book 1) by Mark Frost

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Fantasy, Supernatural

Rating: 5 Stars

This book has been on my TBR for a long time and it was only recently when I re-read the synopsis that I finally decided to pick it up and I also got the audiobook to listen along to. Mark Frost was interesting to see as an author because I know him as the co-creator of Twin Peaks so I was intrigued to see how that style translated into his writing. We are introduced to Will West, who has always had to live by his parent’s seemingly ridiculous set of rules but he has never questioned them or the fact they month every 18 months like clockwork. However, on this morning, Will wakes from a disturbing dream that feels extremely real and finds himself being followed on his morning run by a black sedan. As he evades the car he notices that he is absolutely smashing his average running time and he has no idea how he is doing it. By the time he actually arrives at school Will is worried he has drawn too much attention to himself but the questions about the sedan and how he knew what the driver wanted without being anywhere near them plagues him until he is called to the office. There Will learns that he broke records on his standardized test and he is offer a scholarship to the Centre for Integrated Learning, a private school for the elite and Will know he is going to accept but he can’t shake the feeling that the woman accompanying him home isn’t his mother as something doesn’t feel right about her.

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Things get even stranger when Will realises that the men in black following him have done something to his mother but his father is due home that same day so he will have someone to help him. However, a strange app appears on his phone and it plays a video his father from that morning where he tells Will to run and he will find him when he can. Immediately after watching this video Will realises the men in black are escorting his father into the house and he is still himself so he leaves taking only what he can fit in a bag. He phones Doctor Robbins from the meeting at school as asks her to arrange a flight to the Centre for the night so Will can start tomorrow and they agree but they do want to know why when Will arrives. As he makes his way towards town Will is shaken and scared as these men in black seem to have strange creatures at their disposal that the strange man from town saved him from. He manages to get to a taxi office but within minutes there are police and helicopters looking for Will but Nando helps him out and gets Will to the airport by hiding him in a secret baggage compartment. Nando explains a voice told him that the next person to walk in was very important and he had to help them and that person was Will and somehow Will knows the names of Nando’s children even though he has never mentioned it. Within minutes of Will entering the airport aiming to follow Nando’s advice for blending in the men in black are there too.

As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, I was really invested in the strange happenings in Will’s life and wanted to see how it played out. We get to see Will using these strange mental abilities that he seems to have in order to safely navigate the airport without being caught by the people that are looking for him. On the plane, it is a different story as Dave is there, Dave works from ANZAC and have been given the mission of protecting Will and he has done so once before. On the plane there are gremlins like creatures that try taking out the engine but Dave stops them but he has a habit of disappearing whenever Will needs to ask some serious questions but he does give Will two pairs of glasses that allow him to see these creatures when they are normally invisible to the naked eye. Dave also give away the information that these creatures come from a place called The Never-Was and I hope we learn more about this as the novel progresses. By the time he is picked up by representatives from the Centre, Will is mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted but he feels safe with these people and protected inside the walls of the Centre. Will obviously doesn’t tell the whole truth about what happened before he came to the Centre but he does tell the partially truth and we can see the higher ups in the school know something about what is happening to Will but they don’t want to explain it right now. During his orientation, Will ends up in the infirmary after fainting which allows him to meet Brooke, who is going to be his guide around the school but all Will can think of is how beautiful she is until they meet Lyle. Lyle is the student charged with enforcing the rules in the dormitories and Will immediately realises that Lyle has a mental ability similar to his and is able to keep Lyle out of his mind and away from the information he wants to keep secret but he understands why Brooke seems terrified of him. He also gets Brooke to hide his burner phone from Nando as phones and laptops aren’t allowed on the campus but Will needs a connection to the outside world as that is where his family is and he needs to make sure that they are ok.

As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, I was hyped that Will was now at the Centre and we might get to see more of these different abilities in the near future. Will is introduced to his new roommates and they all seem to have something unique about them but the closest we have seen to Will’s ability is Lyle and Elise but both use their gifts in ways that aren’t quite nice and Lyle is straight up mean with him especially to those that he feels are beneath him and Will is the first person to not only challenge Lyle’s authority but to public try and humiliate him for going after Ajay. Will is also in contact with Nando to tell Will the black caps and his parents (although Nando doesn’t know they are Will’s parents) are heading on a private jet to Phoenix meaning Will’s diversion worked and they don’t know he is at the Centre which makes it a good thing that the Centre is basically off the grid with no cell phones, laptops or external internet. However, Will is finding it difficult to adjust and the only person he seems to have a try connection with is Ajay as they are both scholarship students and don’t come from money like a lot of the school population. He also feels a connection to Brooke but there is something going on between her and Todd which Will wants to know about. There is also the information that they had another roommate, Ronnie, the previous year who died and Will is seeking out more information on that. At his meeting with Doctor Robbins, she can’t believe that he finished his test in under 20 minutes and yet got every answer right without trying and he also receives a call from the school’s doctor asking Will and Doctor Robbins to meet with him to discuss the results of Will’s blood test meaning there might be something physical that gives Will his particular gifts.

As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, I was loving The Paladin’s Prophecy and couldn’t wait to see where the novel was going to go. It turns out there is something physically different about Will as he is capable of running for great distances without tiring as his blood oxygen levels are three times the normal and he heals very quickly. The doctor wants Will’s medical records and Will is struck with the thought he has never been to a doctor and never needed one as he was given physicals by his father growing up but he doesn’t mention this to the teachers. As he begins attending lessons Will quickly learns that he has a lot to catch up on if he is going to make the cut for staying at the school which he desperately needs as it is the only place he feels safe right now. When he heads to the running group he is distracted by Dave who leads him down to a basement where they witness a lamia come from The Never-Was but Dave deals with it before it can harm Will but someone had to summon it over to this side but he doesn’t know who it was. After beating Todd, one of the best runners at the school he is livid and he has it out for Will along with Lyle. The pair decide to toss Will’s room in search of contraband but he manages to hide his phone under the floorboards but he has learnt some disturbing information from Nando who has learnt that the Black Caps are in the with people who gave Will the test which is how they were able to find him. Will also believes that Lyle and Todd were part of the group that summoned the lamia but he needs to be able to prove it so he convinces the rest of his roommates that the only way to change the system is to break the rules and everyone is onboard even though Brooke seems very reluctant. In addition to this, Will also learns that Dave was a helicopter pilot that died in Vietnam but he was given almost a second life as a guardian angel, in the simplest terms, and he is contracted to Will for the foreseeable future which is the thing that freaks will out the most right now.

As we cross into the second half of the novel, Will, Ajay and Nick are heading to investigate the room Will saw the lamia appear from and he even comes clean to his friends about some of the supernatural things that have been having to him as he believes they are all connected. In the auxiliary locker room, they find mask, hats and a list of names of a group called themselves the Peers when a man dressed as the Paladin begins chasing them with a sword and hatchet and they flee down a tunnel they find behind the lockers. They race down the tunnel until it reaches a T junction and they choose the right passageway which leads them to a ladder but there is a now a group chasing them. By the time they release the hatch and close it again they realises they are on the island in the lake belong to one of the school’s benefactors and they have to steal a boat to get back to the school. However, as they evade the guards, Will notices that Lyle is one the island and they manage to make it back barely in time for the curfew. Once they relax, the girls help them look into the things they found and they realise the list containing the names of the original members of The Knights of Charlemagne who were also called the Paladins. They reason that there must be a new group of Knights within the Centre and they believe that Lyle is a member and this group is connected to Haxley and the Black Caps. As Will continues to discover new abilities, he is also learning more about the school and the connection to the Paladins and Will is beginning to get the feeling he might not even be safe here. There is still also the question of the girl who Will sometimes sees when she dreams of him and she might have some of the answers that Will is looking for.

As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, I was eager to find out who the Paladins are and what they want with Will, there is also the questions of whether Will is actually human as he understands that his parents don’t have any of these gifts and for him to inherit them they had to come from somewhere. Will finds what turns out to be flash drive hidden in his room probably by the previous occupant, Ronnie Murso and gives it to Ajay to investigate. As the dig further into The Knights of Charlemagne, they have an idea of the students involves but Will still has no way of proving the Never-Was exists. Ajay manages to set up a video call with Nando thanks to a secret room hidden within Ajay’s room and Nando enters Will’s home where everything has been trashed but he needs to get Will’s medical files. In his parent’s room they find the doctor’s bag his father used on Will as a child but the initials on the bag aren’t J. W. but H. G. which makes no sense to Will. However, the house is quickly swarmed by strange bugs that burst into flames proving the existence of the monsters Will has talked about and while Nando escapes the house, a bug attacks the car severing the connection and Will can’t get hold of him again but they decide to bring the girls in. Will is also sure that Elise knows something about what Ronnie hid on the flash drive and together the solve Ronnie’s riddles and as the final door opens the avatar of Ronnie appears before them and Ronnie might hold the key to everything. Ronnie becoming such a key player in this story despite being missing for over a year has really raised the stakes as they might be able to figure out where Ronnie is or what happened to him but it is becoming clearer that each of these students is gifted in some way. So far we know Ajay has an incredible memory, Nick is a skilled gymnast to an insane degree, Elise has the power to read people and their emotions and Will can read people’s minds and predict their movements and Ronnie was skilled at games, the only one I don’t have a read on yet is Brooke. Things get more difficult as it is becoming more and more clear that Will is either super human or not human at all but things reach a head when he informs Doctor Robbins about the Knights with the impending arrival of his “parents” and Brooke is kidnapped by the Paladin after Lyle tries to kill him. Will is beginning to put the pieces together but the Paladin informs him that Will doesn’t even know who he truly is and can’t claim to know who the Paladin is. As Will, Ajay and Nick make a plan for rescuing Brooke in the next fifteen minutes I am hoping to learn more about what it means for Will to be an Initiate which is an alive version of Dave but I have no idea how the novel is going to conclude but I am 100% sure that I will be continuing with this series.

As we cross into the final section of the novel, I couldn’t wait to see what the plan is that the boys have come up with and how the novel will conclude since it has been an endless trail of twists and turns. The final section of this novel was intense as we see a clash between Will and his friends and the Knights of Charlemagne. However, the fascinating thing is how all the supernatural elements come together and we seemingly uncover the truth behind Will’s abilities and that of his friends. The ending of the novel was an absolute gut punch for me emotionally and I honestly can’t wait to get into the sequel, Alliance as soon as I can to see what Will does next.

Buy it here:

Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com

Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com