I quite like Sean Russell's work. His Initiate Brother was an excellent novel, as was its follow-up, Gatherer of Clouds. Apparently he likes to work in duologies, as Beneath the Vaulted Hills is the first book in a duology called The River Into Darkness, which describes a world which is in the process of losing what little shards of magic remain to it. There is an investigative element here, as an impoverished young nobleman joins forces with an erudite former student of the last remaining mage to go in search of a semi-mythical door to other worlds which both men have some reason to suspect is still navigable.

For a world where magic is departing, there is a surprising amount of it, albeit not of the wizards and fireball variety. A woman whose incredible sexual appeal is highly suspect as well as the brilliant paintings of a seeming madman whose pictures appear to have a prescient quality add interesting elements, and a mysterious nobleman who may well come from another world creates an intriguingly dangerous vibe to the story. Unfortunately, the ominous setup is not followed through particularly well, as the last 200 of the book's 480 pages is largely filled with what amounts to a dungeon crawl which is almost as tedious for the reader as it no doubt was for the characters. If you are one of those who found Frodo and Sam's long crawl across Mordor to be bordering on the painful, you will likely find this last section to be unrewarding.

Style: The author writes well, with dialogue that is generally appropriate to the setting, and he does a nice job of conveying the varying social status of his characters through their speech. The descriptions, as is customary with Russell, are excellent, providing vivid mental pictures without requiring multiple paragraphs to do so. A sense of longing unaccountably pervades the book; it adds a pathos and a depth of feeling which creates a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Story: For all that the end is drawn out, the story itself is an interesting one. The idea of people inadvertantly crossing over into other worlds is not exactly new, but the presence of an important man uncertain of his origins within the world in which the story is primarily set works fairly well. I found the Church - Mage antagonism to be somewhat of an unnecessary distraction, but the quest for truth which, in some way, seems to permeate nearly every character keeps the reader absorbed and curious as to how Mr. Russell is going to pull it all together. This is only the first half of the story, of course, but enough questions are answered to keep one satisfied for the nonce.

Characters: For all that the author does a good job with the dialogue, I found the characterizations to be a little on the weak side. The churchman is ever warning of dire dangers without ever spelling them out, the beautiful woman suddenly decides to have sex with the intellectual despite being infatuated with another man, the young painter comes off as a creepy little Peeping Tom instead of the lovesick would-be romantic that he is apparently intended to be. Both Erasmus and Eldrich, the student and the mage, are rather incomplete despite being the two most important characters in the novel; this is okay with the mage as he is supposed to be unknowable and superhuman, but nevertheless he is never particularly ominous or frightening and one always has the notion that Erasmus would rather be settled in with a good book and a cup of tea than be involved in whatever the author has him doing at the moment.

Also, the book suffers from one of the most absurd sex scenes to be published outside of Penthouse Forum or the Crusader book that took me about thirty pages before I realized it was not, in fact, historical fiction, but a gentlemen's novel in a medieval setting. I swear, sometimes I seriously wonder if most writers have ever successfully pursued a real live girl.

Creativity: Russell has a lot of good ideas but I am not always particularly enamored with the way in which he chooses to exercise them. His use of the gate to other worlds is at least somewhat different and I was enchanted with the idea of the prescient painter that I feel quite tempted to steal it for some work in the future, but in reading this book one is often struck with a sense that one has read something somewhat similar before. Perhaps it is something with the names, I'm not sure, but Erasmus for the Intellectual, Eldrich for the Mage... well, it's quite possible that I'm being a bit nonsensical here, but in any case, the work is reasonably imaginative for a fantasy novel if not stunningly so.

Text Sample: He bent low and went under the first window, and then came to the one from which light escaped. It was slightly ajar, and as he came to it heard unmistakably a woman moan. For a second Kent froze in place, almost reeling. It was his absolute worst fear. It could not be the countess. She had left with Erasmus Flattery, for Farrelle's sake. The man was brilliant, no doubt, but he was hardly an object of fascination to the women of Avonel. No, this must be some maid and her buck. The sounds of love became more insistent.

Ever so slowly, Kent raised his head. Before the fireplace a man and a woman lay on a divan. A trill of laughter, then a moan. Then suddenly the woman rose, astride her lover, her face hidden by dark tendrils of hair. She moved over her lover more urgently now. With a quick motion she threw her head back, revealing her face, her naked torso.

Kent closed his eyes and let his head rest against the window ledge. It was she. As he stayed thus, he listened to her cry out, unable to contain her pleasure.

He opened up his eyes again, watching her move over her lover. Drawing up the man's hands she pressed them tight to her breasts. When her climax came, she collapsed over her lover, burying him in the dark avalanche of her hair.

"Mr. Flattery!" she teased, her voice filled with pleasure. "You have taken liberties with me, sir! As penance, you shall be flogged... with my hair-fifty lashes. And you shall have to stay and pleasure me until the light of day."

Kent heard the unmistakable sound of Erasmus Flattery's laughter. The countess rose up again and Kent did not even attempt to hide, she was so beautiful. The firelight played upon her perfect form, turning her skin the color of copper.

Kent was sure he had never felt such exquisite agony, and at the same time his heart was pounding at what he had just seen. The Countess of Chilton in the act of love. He had heard her cries of pleasure, and though it was not he in her arms, it should have been, it was more than most men would ever know. At least he had seen her lost to passion. To his obsessed and confused mind, it seemed almost like intimacy.