David L. Burkhead's The Chooser: A Tale of Modern Valkyrie
The First Day of Jimbo's Annual Memorial Day Weekend Event!
Welcome to the First Day of Jimbo's Annual Memorial Day Weekened Event! Over today and the rest of the weekend you will be treated to reviews of four books written by four separate veterans. We believe in giving back at Jimbo’s and this is our little way of giving something back to the people who have risked their lives to protect the rest of us.
And for the record yes, I know that Memorial Day is for those that don't make it home, but I don't know of any Science Fiction or Fantasy authors that have fallen in the line of duty.
Today's book was written by David Burkhead. Burkhead David was a Cryptologic Linguist in the United States Air Force from 1981-1987. After leaving the service, he went back to school and got a degree in physics in 1997. He is a single father of a young woman, four dogs and two ferrets.
As for the book…
It’s not every day that I get to read a story that takes place primarily in Valhalla and is, in large part at least, a mystery story, if not the classic whodunit. So when I say that David L. Burkhead’s The Chooser is unlike anything I’ve ever read before, I mean it. And that’s saying something because the first fantasy story I remember reading was Where the Wild Things Are and that was age appropriate for me at the time. It was also over forty years ago. Don’t get me wrong. I love stories that include all of the classic fantasy tropes. Still and all, it’s a rare and wondrous gift to get something I can read and enjoy that doesn’t read like everything else I’ve read over the last forty-five years.
Okay, so maybe the use of Norse Heathenry as a setting is not totally new. I stilled enjoyed it. And it’s clear that Burkhead knows his stuff. He knows how things work in the lore. The book also features a return of one of my favorite villains in World of Warcraft lore, although with a totally different take on the character, so that was cool. It was good to see an old foe treated more as part of the process than someone who was trying to kill me. I enjoyed that.
The villain in The Chooser is not a world ending, all powerful, Thanos like being capable of slaughtering entire populations. The villain is someone who is much more real and immediate. The type of villain that exists in the real world and who wouldn’t be welcomed by the residents of any prison in the United States. He is honestly the kind of person that I would take great personal joy in turning in while secretly hoping that he would resist arrest. I’ll let you guess why.
Our hero is a young boy named Kamil who is much too young to end up in the afterlife, but does anyway. He’s a bit scared at first, but he’s been through a lot and is continuing to go through more. I’ll give the kid this much though: He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t give in. And when his time comes, he’s ready to do what he needs to do. Kamil is fierce.
Kamil is also dauntless, not to be confused with Dauntless. Seriously there were no needles and mind control involved in this kids story. He works his tail off in confusing circumstances to learn what he needs to learn with no clear understanding of why he ended up where he did. This is not your typical teenage punk. Kamil is, in a lot of ways, what I should have been at his age. I like this guy.
Except maybe he’s not really the main character. There is also a valkyrie named Goll. There’s actually supposed to be an accent over that o, but Substack appears to not accept alt codes. Their bad. Anyway, I almost feel bad for Goll. She gets caught in one situation that saddens her and then another that confuses her. I’ll give her this much though: regardless of her personal thoughts on the matter, she gets her job done. Plus she has a really cool sounding horse and horses are cool. I like horses. So she gets props from me there as well.
My only complaint about The Chooser is how short it is, but that maybe doing both the book and Burkhead a disservice. I think it’s the right length for the story that needed to be told. As my Rhetoric 160 teacher used to say; “It should be the length of a woman’s skirt: Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep things interesting.” Burkhead has accomplished that here.
All in all, I’m glad I read The Chooser and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy stories or stories with a good moral. Burkhead definitely had a point to make with this story and he does it without lecturing. That may, in fact, be the best part of the book. I look forward to reading some more of Burkhead’s work in the future.
Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Naginatas
The Chooser
David L. Burkhead
Self-Published, 2019
The Chooser is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.
The Chooser