Bryce and the Lost Pearl (Lightglider Origin Story)
Summary
Bryce and the Lost Pearl is a tie-in novel to the Christian virtual world Lightgliders. Focusing on the origin of Bryce, a character and Lightglider from the video game ecosystem, this story goes through his first foray into the realm of Glideon, a fantastical land threatened by corruption and held together by hope. After taking a forbidden ride to a mysterious island, Bryce loses his horse and is forced to go searching through untamed wilderness. Soon he finds himself taken out of his old world and thrown into a new one filled with monsters, heroes, long-lost technology, and strange new friends.
Assessment
Bryce and the Lost Pearl is a decent story with a solid theological message, relatable and interesting characters, and the potential to have some fascinating worldbuilding. There is a heavy emphasis placed on science and engineering, but not without also incorporating a strong faith element. There are also some threads of fantasy woven in; for example, the pseudo-mythical creatures known as Gliddles, but all of that points directly towards God in some way or another.
The book suffers from two related problems. The first is incredibly clunky and unrefined worldbuilding and the second is an unpolished second half. While the book’s worldbuilding in the first half is decent — it takes place mostly in Australia — and establishes the characters well, the worldbuilding for the land of Glideon is more disorganized and uncoordinated. There’s no linear flow to how the world of Glideon and the Lightglider Academy is explained to the audience and many of the characters seem to be speaking in riddles. It’s clear that Glideon has a specific set of physics and rules for how it operates, but what exactly those rules are and how they are used is incredibly unclear. This leads to a jumbled second half of the story that struggles through both character motivation and plot.
This said, the book is entirely clean and holds a good theological message about the importance of worship and reliance on God. There is also the element of tying into a broader media IP which will make the book very appealing to pre-teens who have already played in the Lightglider game and devotional ecosystem. Aside from the technical issues in the second half, the book has a good theological message and is packed with adventure, actions, consequences, and deeper meanings.
Light-o-Meter
Writing Style: 4 out of 7 Little Lights
Plot: 3 out of 7 Little Lights (5 for the first half)
Worldbuilding: 3 out of 7 Little Lights (5 for the first half)
Characters: 5 out of 7 Little Lights
Theological Message: 5 out of 7 Little Lights
Overall: 4 out of 7 Little Lights
Talk
Okay, diving right into the analysis: the first half of this book had me pretty well-engaged. It’s obviously meant for a younger crowd, but the characters were relatable, the theological message was really well-done, and the mystery of what was going to happen next was exciting and intriguing. The set-up for the story did seem to drag on a bit longer than it should have, but that is no big deal. The problems I had with the story really cropped up in the second half, when Bryce is in the land of Glideon and he’s trying to navigate all of the who-what-where questions that come with being thrown into a totally different dimension.
The descriptions of how Glideon, the Gliddles, the Lightgliders, Professor Watts, and even the ways the characters were talking were kind of a jumbled mess of spaghetti (there’s a bit of a time travel element, so you have characters from different regions of the world and eras, which I really liked, but a lot of their dialogue was off, even for being anachronistic). The plot felt a bit rushed, there was a lot of talking around the worldbuilding of Glideon to keep it mysterious, which in this case kind of just leaves the audience confused. Overall the characters were great and the world was really interesting, but nothing was clear enough to grasp hold of.
All of this said, I want to take a moment of time from this article to clarify: tie-in novels are difficult. Especially video game tie-in novels. Video games have this whole new dimension of interactivity with the audience that makes them really tricky to translate into the far less interactive setting of long form fiction. Given how excellent and well-coordinated the first half of the book is, I can comfortably say that the author does know his stuff when it comes to novel writing — particularly for pre-teens — and so I want to give him full props for tackling a novel-video game tie-in. This story has a lot of great bones when it comes to kids’ fiction, the second half just feels like it needed some refinement.
Where to Enjoy
Audible: Bryce and the Lost Pearl Audiobook by Derek Holser MEd MTh JD, Zach Fay MDiv MBA
Barnes & Noble: Bryce and the Lost Pearl by Derek Holser MEd MTh, Zach Fay MDiv MBA, Jesse Abeel | 2940195040307 | Audiobook (Digital) | Barnes & Noble®
Christianbook: Bryce and the Lost Pearl: Derek Holser, Zach Fay & George Ermos: 9781645074762 - Christianbook.com
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