The Vanishing Sculptor is Donita K Paul’s newest novel. It’s set in the same world as her DragonKeeper Chronicles, but takes place during a much earlier time and in a country that is far removed from the Amara we got to know in her earlier books.

The Vanishing Sculptor is a story about Tipper, a young emerlindian girl (an interesting take on elves) who is forced to sell her father’s masterful works of art in order to pay the house bills for years after her father disappeared. Unfortunately for her, and the world, it turns out that 3 of the sculptures she’s sold were carved out of one of the foundation stones of the earth! She must now set out on a quest (those pesky things, awfully uncomfortable these quests are- according to Wizard Fenworth) to retrieve these statues to prevent the total disolution of the world… and her father.

Even though I really miss Sir Dar, who, in this book, has not even been born yet, I love that Wizard Fenworth is back. Yes! There is nothing better than a wizard who drops off to sleep in mid sentence and who grows bark and leaves during his snoozes, not to mention the bizarre logic he follows that would make a sidewinder jealous with all the zigs and zags it takes.

Donita K Paul writes YA fantasy, and does it very well. The quality of her writing has improved with each book, and, surprisingly, each plot is remarkably fresh. Not all stories are particularly gripping, some are naturally better than others. But they’re all unique.

Happily, she’s gotten over her habit of over-naming things. In the first book of the DragonKeeper Chronicles, EVERYTHING had a weird name. It made it extremely difficult to follow the story, or even a train of thought. Particularly when the things being named didn’t actually have anything to do with the story at all.

This began to taper off until the last few books in the series were a good standard of fantasy naming. No more than is necessary.

In The Vanishing Sculptor, Paul continues to only name what’s necessary. There are only two things that I can really find fault with (aside from the lack of Sir Dar, which was necessary), and that’s that sometimes the quest seems a little too normal. As in, they go here, and then this happens, and then they go here.  So, in my opinion, a couple of scenes could have been removed with a mention of “they continued on to such and such, obtained such and such, and then proceeded to reach the such and such”. That would have left more room for what I consider to be the good stuff to be fleshed out a bit more.

The other thing that I take issue with is that they eat daggarts in Chiril. Which, as we know, is a common treat in Amara a few centuries later. I’m willing to forgive this point by telling myself that Wizard Fenworth and Librettowit brought daggarts back to Amara from Chiril and that’s how they became popular in Amara. Remember, Chiril and Amara are across the world from each other, and so travel is prohibitive. The odds of the same cookie-type treat being popular across the world when people didn’t travel across the world is pretty slim. It’s a minor point, I know, but it irritated me while I was reading.

If you’re interested in ordering The Vanishing Sculptor, it can be ordered directly from Random House, or from your favorite large bookstore.

Addendum: Donita K Paul answered the question “If you could say one thing to aspiring novelists, what would you say?” on Christian author C.J. Darlington‘s blog.

Also, I forgot to mention my other The Vanishing Sculptor review at TitleTrakk.com