Review of "Protectors of the Light Crown" by Aspry Jones

Score: 89+/100 (8.9+ out of 10)

Protectors of the Light Crown is an imaginative sci-fi and fantasy hybrid that refuses to pick a single lane, veering into paranormal and even absurdist territory. It opens like a dark legend with an angel, a fallen king, and a ruined realm, then swerves hard into a near-future city where a sleepy gamer named Dexter Park crosses paths with an anime-coded swordswoman who raids his pantry for bouillon cubes and batteries. The result is bold and frequently fun. It is also messy and chaotic. You can feel the author reaching for a lot at once. Sometimes the reach lands. Sometimes it drops the ball.

It comes across as ambitious and sometimes fun but ultimately messy and chaotic.

The hook is strong. In the fantasy thread, Greith of Frays becomes the horned Venomous Wretch, a tyrant who tries to buy the divine with a red, coin-like power buried in his body. In the modern thread, Dexter’s vivid dreams bleed into reality, bringing in Tickle, a blue-haired warrior who slashes through chalk-dust monsters called Grounders. These worlds are set on a collision course, and that premise has juice. The best passages snap with comic-book energy and cinematic staging. A ghost-town showdown mixes demons, drones, and a rocket-chaired vigilante called Mr. Nice Guy while a living buzzsaw named Sable carves through the fray. Even the quiet beats land at times. A diner scene at Ray Ray’s gives this wild book something like a pulse. The author can do small human moments and splashy spectacle. On that front, it delivers.

Where it stumbles is focus.

Something about this book seemed really... off...to us. A lot of stuff happens, and there are a lot of characters in this book, but so little of it seems to have much oomph. And a lot of it just doesn't seem to make much sense. The storyline is so chaotic and topsy-turvy that it seemed borderline incoherent and aimless to us.

There is a fine line between creativity versus throwing multi-colored paint at a canvas to see what sticks. This book sometimes chooses the latter. Characters flood in with cool names and powers, then fade in and out before they can anchor themselves in your harbor or before you can sink your teeth into them. Plotlines bloom and wilt in quick succession.

This book has a major problem with tonal and topical whiplash. It goes from grim angelic judgment to kitchen-sink comedy to ultraviolence and back again. The shift can be charming in isolation. Stacked together, it can feel like channel surfing. It literally feels like flipping between the Syfy Channel and CW. It often seems like the narrative and the book itself don't know what they want to be and what they want to talk about. That indecision and lack of a distinct identity keeps readers at arm’s length.

It’s like a football team that tries to be run-heavy, run-and-shoot, and air-raid all at once. You can admire the playbook and find it fascinating, interesting, and cool, but you also get delay-of-game penalties, too many men on the field, and missed assignments because nobody knows what the heck is going on. The constant scheming pulls attention away from the fundamentals: consistent character work, a clear offensive identity, and a drive you can track from snap to whistle. Here, dazzling ideas keep substituting in and out before the previous ones have finished their routes, so the possession changes feel flashy rather than earned. You know what it's like? It's like a team that has two QBs and hasn't decided on a starter, so they keep swapping back and forth.

This book tries so hard to surprise and dazzle that it stumbles and distracts. It really is frustrating because there was a lot to love about this book.

We think we know what the author was going for. This was supposed to be something like Doctor Who. It was supposed to feature a time-traveling character who can go anywhere and do anything at any time—the possibilities are literally endless! Like the Doctor, Dexter encounters angels, demons, monsters (like werewolves), all the while navigating all sorts of wild, wacky multiversal conflicts across timelines.

We go from talking about Roguesheart and Greith of Frays/Venomous Wretch to talking about Dexter Park and Tickle gutting Grounders in a bombed-out warehouse, then we blink and we’re with Mr. Nice Guy rocketing off a saloon roof while Sable scythes through demons, then we’re inside Harmony-as-conduit wrestling an ancient bastard spirit, then Oath is doing timeline calculus behind the curtain, then Keepsake is deadpanning from a kitchen lab, then “Waitress” is not really a waitress but actually Janet but call her "Waitress" because she doesn't want to be called Janet; then Easy is smooth-talking through chaos, then there's General Bastard and his whole backstory, then a werewolf militia shows up, then drones arrive to televise a desert coronation in which a Light Crown literally refuses to be stolen; and before we can process that, we’re snapped back to the angel and the Wretch. Each beat is cool in isolation, but stacked end to end it plays like channel surfing, high on spectacle and low on the steady drum that lets a reader’s heart stay with the same team or players through the season.

Oh, and that's not even mentioning the reindeer jerky.
Or Suni Mako, the father of Sky/Scarlet/Sable.
Or the Norbine virus.
Or how Joppa was able to outgun Vanticon?
Or TanAndSexy23.
Did we mention the reindeer jerky?
It's just so much... stuff. So much stuff that seems like superfluous, excess fluff.
We think we're supposed to be smiling and laughing. We think it's supposed to be comedic and humorous.

It just doesn't seem to mix and mesh in our opinion. At the same time, there’s a lot of good ideas here to work with if the author were really trying to create a series or a saga. The fix isn’t to shrink the imagination; it’s to sequence it. Pick a North Star (Dexter as the anchor POV), cap the core cast per book (three or four mains, everyone else in cameo), and align each volume to a clean thesis: Book One = breach and belonging; Book Two = crown and cost; Book Three = reckoning and repair. Let relationships breathe between set pieces, save a few toys for the sequel (looking at you, extra factions), and keep the moral through-line--grace can’t be seized--front and center so the fireworks have something solid to orbit.

Do that and the strengths already on the page--comic-book staging, sticky images (the Grounder rescue, the ghost-town gauntlet, the crown that refuses a thief), and the found-family warmth--will land better. In other words: the ingredients are there, the recipe just needs a steadier hand. If this is the pilot to a bigger saga, we’re in. Just give us a clearer lane to run.

Update: Ok, after taking a step back and reading a very similar book called Childhood's Hour: The Lost Desert by E.E. Glass, we think we have a little more insight into what the author was going for. This book is supposed to be surreal and/or dreamlike because its main protagonist is narcoleptic. When you dream, your thoughts and the stories you dream about are usually quite confusing and don't always make a lot of sense. That's why a lot of people regret not writing their dreams down and trying the piece them together. Most of us forget our dreams. That's why there are literally dream interpreters who specialize in this stuff. With that context in mind, this book is actually quite fitting and can be interesting and fun.

Aspry Jones is clearly a brilliant person, an Emmy Award-nominated, veteran news broadcaster. He is also clearly imaginative and creative, which we applaud. Often times, when you're super brilliant, creative, and imaginative, it's tempting to overthink and overcomplicate things for others. 

There's a lot of substance to work with here.

Check it out on Amazon!