RealmShift 
Self published in 2006 by Alan Baxter (AHWA Member and all around nice guy) and rereleased in 2008 by Blade Red Press
ISBN-13: 978-0980578201
On starting to read this offering I was filled with dread as deus-ex machina seemed ingrained. In a modern day setting, gods, devils, and characters with superhuman powers were everywhere, with our protagonist, Isiah, chief among them.
A 400 year old tool of a vaguely described entity called “The Balance”, Isiah struggles to maintain the status quo between gods and other supreme creatures of power.
The status quo between gods not so much the good and evil bit. The lines are continually blurred as Isiah struggles to keep a loosely preordained plan on track and save a minor deity from extinction because the loss of this one god of an Amazonian rain forest tribe would result in collateral damage of apocalyptic proportions. If a butterfly flaps it wings in Brazil…
But human nature rides roughshod over the development of Isiah as a character, making him a little more good than evil. He has an innate niceness about him which allows the forces of good, like the angel Gabriel, to side with him occasionally, even cultivate a friendship with him. When thinking of the champion for Balance I would consider someone who is a true neutral would be required, but Isiah is thankfully not. He is a flawed character who retains his humanity and really only wants out of his current vocation and a chance to find some peace – this makes him easy to identify and empathise with – once you get past all his amazing abilities.
Alan Baxter has a unique style to his prose which I found annoying at first. It seemed he has a physical aversion to joining sentences together with little words like ‘and’, preferring instead to just use a comma. This gives many sentences a disjointed quality and jars the reader out of the story. If the intention was to create pace and immediacy, it failed in my opinion. Strangely this trait seems to die out as you progress through the book so as you rush toward the end it makes less of an appearance which adds to the overall pace and a feeling of a better produced book.
However, the story is solid and carries the reader through the sprawling urban jungle to the heat and oppression of the Guatemalan jungle, home of the ancient Maya. We follow Isiah as he tries to nudge events back into alignment by escorting a nasty piece of work by the name of Samuel from seedy backstreets to an archaeological dig site to kill a man, and save a girl, who would ultimately save a race of people, and therefore a god.
For you see, in Baxter's world, people create gods. Both the good ones and the evil ones, for belief is the basis of divinity. If people truly believe, then their god, or devil, or other supreme creature, comes into being. The more people who believe, the stronger the entity. Isiah works for the force in between, “The Balance”, which ensures one side of the eternal struggle never becomes stronger than the other. There are plot convolutions a plenty and occasionally it gets a little murky, but it does all make perfect sense in the end.
Add a small cast of characters who are swept up in the events triggered by Samuel’s attempts to get out of a deal he made with Satan. Katherine Bailey is a journalist for an eco-friendly magazine: in love with her boyfriend, overworked, and has a strong desire to help preserve native cultures, but she is one of the very few individuals on the planet who doesn’t believe in anything beyond her existence. Carlos Villalopez is a truly evil individual with no conscience. A mercenary living in the jungles of Guatemala, he is another who doesn’t believe. This causes a problem. With no belief, then they have no god to nudge them back on the right track and keep things as they should be. Individuals like this are the jokers in the pack of life; wild cards who keep Isiah’s life interesting.
When Carlos sets out on a mission of revenge, his path becomes entwined with Samuel and Katherine’s, until Samuel decides to break his deal. Enter “The Balance’ and Isiah in an attempt to get things back on track.
Nearly all the characters in the story have abilities above those of mortal man, but when you’re travelling between Limbo and Hell, I guess one should expect this. Our main character deals with Satan, Gabriel, vampires, dragons, and ‘The Balance’, among other things, so extra powers are a requirement. But the mortals are a little different as well. The the villain, Carlos, is a walking death machine, the best at what he does, Samuel is a growing psychic power in his own right, and even the journalist has hyper-sensitive capabilities, which all leads to a slight sense of unbelievability. But then, when something momentous is about to happen, you'd expect to see the cream rise to the top - wouldn't you?
Another minor gripe I had was with “The Balance” – Apart from a theory offered by Isiah toward the end of the book, it remains somewhat ‘just there’; a convenient tool to fill in a plot hole. While the existence of everything else is explained, the Balance is not. It also shouts – ALL THE TIME. I think Baxter may have been going for an all encompassing voice, something which surrounded Isiah completely whenever it communicated with him, but this could have been expressed through descriptive narrative rather than type every response in CAPITALS.
Finally the ending was a little bit of a let down. The lead up to it is brilliant, with extreme care taken to build tension and getting the reader to start second guessing what is about to come. The imagery is excellent as are the descriptive passages. It is fast and action-packed, but it plateaus a little on the climax and the after affects, particularly the reactions of the mortal characters, is very disappointing.
So, in the end, I found RealmShift to be a good story based on an interesting premise, but I think it would have benefited from going through a more vigorous editorial process to iron out the prose, remove some of the little annoying bits, and give it a more kick ass ending. Still, it is definitely worth the time spent reading it as Baxter manages to work with an intriguing list of characters, throws a thought provoking explanation of religion at the reader, and keeps everything moving at a rapid pace, while making some nice observations about today’s society and those within it. I look forward to reading the second instalment, MageSign, to see where the authors goes from here.
Andy Hallett, who starred as Lorne (otherwise known as Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan or simply "the Host") on the Buffy spin-off TV series Angel, died of heart failure last night at age 33. Hallett passed away at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles after a five-year battle with heart disease. 
