Title: Along the Watchtower
Author: David Litwack
Publisher: Double Dragon eBooks
Genre: contemporary fantasy
Rating: Teen (little bit of non-descriptive cursing, rehab for injuries due to IED)
I awoke on a slab.
No. Too soft for a slab. Softer than a corpse would need. Not a slab but a stretcher.
A fog swirled in my brain. I picked through its wisps, searching for a thought to cling to. Then my combat training kicked in. First rule-assess the situation. I steadied myself and tested my senses, starting with touch. I flexed each finger until it grazed the pad of the thumb. So far, so good. Next I listened. Not much to hear. More of a hum than silence. But I could feel a vibration nearby, a throbbing like the heart of a dying beast. My sight might tell me more, but I was afraid to open my eyes. Instead, I sucked air in through my nose.
The smell of jet fuel. Then a wind so strong it rippled my cheeks into folds.
I was outside on a runway. Alive.
After Lieutenant Freddie Williams is caught in an IED explosion in Iraq, he’s sent home to recover. He spends time in a medically induced coma, where he retreats into his mind and the rich fantasy world therein. When he wakes, he faces the hard road of recovering from his physical wounds and dealing with mental injuries he doesn’t even remember.
As he handles his rehabilitation and faces his inner demons, his mind switches back and forth between the real world and the World of Warcraft-based Azeroth, where he is Prince Frederick, soon-to-be king of Stormwind. He has thirty days of trials before he can claim his throne, and if he fails in his tasks, the magical protections will fall and the Burning Legion will overrun the world.
Told from the first person perspective, Along the Watchtower follows Freddie as he deals with his wounded leg and brain injury, as well as the tragedies of his past. There’s a budding romance between him and Becky Marshall, who not only helps with his physical therapy, but goes out of her way to help him deal with his problems.
The things that happen in Stormwind reverberate with real world events, and over the course of the story Freddie not only deals with wounds of the body, but the wounds of his soul. With Becky/Rebecca’s help he goes from a troubled and wounded young man to someone willing to open himself up to the possibility of love and rediscovers the people he’d forgotten in his fear of being hurt again.
CHARACTERS OF NOTE: (Freddie switches back and forth from the regular world to the inner world of Azeroth.)
Lieutenant Freddie Williams/Prince Frederick
Becky Marshall, physical therapist/Rebecca, gardener
Sir Gilbert “Gilly,” Lord Chamberlain
Dinah, nurse
Ralph, health aide
Dr. B
Jimmie
Joey, Freddie’s brother
Richie, Freddie’s brother
A moving story, fairly quick in pace. It’s not my usual read, but I did enjoy it. I really felt for Freddie, whose pre-military life hadn’t been the best, and I was with him all the way as he faced his past and limped forward into the future.
On screen sex: no
Graphic violence: no
HEA ending.
The war in Iraq ended for Lieutenant Freddie Williams when an IED explosion left his mind and body shattered. Once he was a skilled gamer and expert in virtual warfare. Now he’s a broken warrior, emerging from a medically induced coma to discover he’s inhabiting two separate realities. The first is his waking world of pain, family trials, and remorse—and slow rehabilitation through the tender care of Becky, his physical therapist. The second is a dark fantasy realm of quests, demons, and magic that Freddie enters when he sleeps.
In his dreams he is Frederick, Prince of Stormwind, who must make sense of his horrific visions in order to save his embattled kingdom from the monstrous Horde. His only solace awaits him in the royal gardens, where the gentle words of the beautiful gardener, Rebecca, calm the storms in his soul. While in the conscious world, the severely wounded vet faces a strangely similar and equally perilous mission—a journey along a dark road haunted by demons of guilt and memory—and letting patient, loving Becky into his damaged and shuttered heart may be his only way back from Hell.
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Using two fingers and lots of white-out, he religiously typed five pages a day throughout college and well into his twenties. Then life intervened. He paused to raise two sons and pursue a career, in the process becoming a well-known entrepreneur in the software industry, founding several successful companies. When he found time again to daydream, the urge to write returned. His novels include: There Comes a Prophet, Along the Watchtower, and the newly released The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky.
