The Traveler

May 30, 2005
This production opens with an unintentionally hilarious interview with the author, who "lives off the Grid," according to his bio, and protectively distorts his voice for a discussion of his book's relevance to the contemporary matrix of governmental and corporate interference in daily life. The author's grandiose paranoia is overblown, but Carradine does a solid job of keeping a straight face with his reading. Carradine's gravelly, folksy voice conveys the twists and turns of Hawks' action-adventure narrative, lending a weary dignity to his tale of Maya, a twentysomething scion of a group of mercenaries whose sworn duty it is to protect the Travelers, a secret group of great men. Maya yearns to break free of her obligations, but she is forced to help Gabriel and Michael, two brothers who discover that they are Travelers. Carradine may not be able to save Hawks' book entirely from its aura of pompousness, but he makes a fine effort nonetheless.

February 1, 2005
Fantasy or fable? London designer Maya, a Harlequin-sworn to defend the Travelers, prophets who seek enlightenment-learns that American Travelers Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are in danger from the Tabulas, who want to stomp out Travelers and control the world. Like the Corrigans, the mysterious Twelve Hawks claims to live "off the grid." A BOMC main selection.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2005
Two brothers in Los Angeles may be among the last surviving members of a once-powerful secret society known as the Travelers. But their lives are in jeopardy: they have been targeted for assassination by members of another secret society, the Tabula, who are dedicated to the complete eradication of the Travelers and to total control of the world. All that stands in their way is a young woman, part of a small band of warriors who call themselves Harlequins. Their mission: to protect the Travelers at all costs. If this all sounds a little wacky, don't panic: the author, a gifted storyteller, makes this surreal and vaguely supernatural good-versus-evil story entirely believable. Although he has a lot of explaining to do (he has to tell us about three distinct groups of superbeings, to start with), he manages it without clogging his narrative with whopping great chunks of exposition. He writes about Travelers and Tabula and Harlequins as if we already know what they are; he thrusts us into this world as though we already know it and lets us pick it up as we go along. The pace is fast, the characters intriguing and memorable, the evil dark and palpable, and the genre-bending between fantasy and thriller seamless. There are dozens of ways Twelve Hawks could have tripped up, and he avoids every one of them. Assuming this isn't a one-shot, he could be a force to reckon with.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 9, 2005
Twelve Hawks's much anticipated novel is powerful, mainstream fiction built on a foundation of cutting-edge technology laced with fantasy and the chilling specter of an all-too-possible social and political reality. The time is roughly the present, and the U.S. is part of the Vast Machine, a society overseen by the Tabula, a secret organization bent on establishing a perfectly controlled populace. Allied against the Tabula are the Travelers and their sword-carrying protectors, the Harlequins. The Travelers, now almost extinct, can project their spirit into other worlds where they receive wisdom to bring back to earth—wisdom that threatens the Tabula's power. Maya, a reluctant Harlequin, finds herself compelled to protect two naïve Travelers, Michael and Gabriel Corrigan. Michael dabbles in shady real estate deals, while Gabriel prefers to live "off the Grid," eschewing any documentation—credit cards, bank accounts—that the Vast Machine could use to track him. Because the Tabula has engineered a way to use the Travelers for its own purposes, Maya must not only keep the brothers alive, but out of the hands of these evil puppet-masters. She succeeds, but she also fails, and therein lies the tale. By the end of this exciting volume, the first in a trilogy, the stage is set for a world-rending clash between good and evil. Agent, Joe Regal.

May 15, 2005
Fear of an unknown enemy, a constantly uprooted life, and survival tactics are all the Corrigan brothers, Michael and Gabriel, have known since childhood. Now grown and settled in Los Angeles, they are secretly being monitored by the Tabula, a small group of internationally powerful men who have marked them as Travelers, i.e., enlightened prophets able to journey to parallel universes and elude government surveillance. London product designer Maya, trained from her youth to be a Harlequin warrior, avowed protector of Travelers, is now reluctantly answering the call to protect the Corrigan brothers and avenge the death of her Harlequin father. In a centuries-old covert battle to gain complete control of the populace with well-organized fear tactics, the Tabula uses the digital world to their advantage to hunt down the last of the Travelers. With his first installment of "The Fourth Realm" trilogy, debut author Twelve Hawks has created a solid thriller drawing on global situations, high-tech products, and eerily familiar views of spirituality. Although numerous characters are introduced, the steady pace of action continually speeds the reader forward. Recommended for popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/1/05.] -Joy St. John, Henderson District P.L., NV

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.