The day after I finished my read of Kathryn Mackel’s OUTRIDERS: THE BIRTHRIGHT PROJECT, BOOK ONE, I visited my fifteen-year-old niece and learned of her angst towards her new English class assignment.  She is to read four books over the course of the ensuing school year, writing reports for each.

To myself, who reads four books over the course of a few weeks, such is no great task.  To my niece, who tells me she hates reading, being spoiled on it from an oppressive educational system that prohibited her from reading what books she sought, four books and accompanying reports is an enormous challenge.

So what’s a loving uncle to do?  Would OUTRIDERS capture her interest?  It is geared towards the teenage/college-age demographic with its depiction of an earth decimated by years of endless wars.  Technology is gone.  Science exists only in minute doses to a handful of “sorcerers”.  It is a new dark ages, where two competing sides battle: Traxx, ruled by the evil Baron Alrod, contends with Slade, protected by the Outriders, led by Brady of Horesh, one of the original Birthrighters (the first outriders sent from the Ark).

The Ark sends out rooks to be received by Birthrighters on the surface.  This is how the tale begins.  Niki, one of the original four with Brady, is waiting for the arrival of the whale, who will break the surface of the ice, and expel the tusks it swallowed from beneath the surface.  Inside the tusks will be latest rooks in transit from the Ark.

Many years ago, the Endless Wars deprived the Earth of its knowledge of the truth.  One day, a man named Josiah was greeted by an angel who gave to him the lost ancient volumes.  From these, a community of fellow believers was born, an Ark was built and eventually submerged beneath the ice, and now a new generation of young people (ages 16-22) return to the surface, trained to battle the evil forces exerting despotic control over the masses.  They are warriors who serve in the army of the one true Lord, each trained for a specific task and purpose.

On the surface, allow me to state, OUTRIDERS is one of the best told stories I have read.  It held a clear, logical progression where I could follow the action absent any problem.  Niki retrieves the rooks in transit and guides them back to camp, while battling with her own inner turmoil of being in love with Brady.  She believes he has eyes for Taryan, rather than for herself.

While Niki is transporting rooks, Brady and the other outriders are battling gargants in Baron Alrod’s new mogged attempt to pass the Narrows , which separates Traxx from Slade.  Gargants are commoners who have been mogged by Alrod’s sorcerer into grotesque creature over twenty feet in height and with features horribly gone awry and misshapen.

He is expecting the gargants to easily leap over the Narrow into Slade.  What he may not be expecting is the intervention of the Outriders, intent on stopping his evil plans.

This is a strong physical battle Kathryn Mackel delivers to the reader.  It is the typical “good vs. evil” plot any adventure story employs.  Think Rebel Alliance versus the Galactic Empire, the Fellowship of the Ring against the Dark Lord of Mordor, Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity vying for souls against Agent Smith and the machines.  OUTRIDERS is all of that exterior challenge and more.

What Mackel adds to OUTRIDERS that gives it more meat to chew on is what Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and the Matrix all do in suffusing a “behind-the-scenes” peeling back the curtain that shows the evil lying underneath the surface.

There are genuine confrontations with true evil – not evil persons.  The OUTRIDERS face the very evil that hides in the shadows manipulating the events those who are inhabited by them cause.  This could not have been any better written.  I got an actual sense of foreboding doom – like being in the path of a tornado, or hurricane, or earthquake, or name you disaster – that cannot be stopped.  Though the Outriders are fearless, confronting evil stirs within them a helpless fear.  Expertly done, I say.  Bravo.

So, would OUTRIDERS be a book my fifteen-year-old nice would enjoy?  There is a character to it which says, ‘teen/young adult’.  There is a language as unclear to the adult mind as the grammatically-incoherent alphabet soup of Instant Messaging craze that age group revels within. 

Hoornars?  Jangle?  Eya?  Rooks?  Gargants?  Is this English?

The time is set years into the future.  What did I expect?  Everyone to talk in the language of the 21^st century American?  Teenage to College-Age kids?    Come on!  Be a realist. 

So, will my niece like OUTRIDERS?  It is book one in a fantasy series with a great adventure and a true villain against impossible circumstances and a strong faith in the Creator of all the Universe to serve as guide and strength.  In ways, it runs comparable to stories found from the Bible. 

I think she would enjoy the story.  Once I got past a vernacular I initially didn’t understand, I certainly did.