THE FIFTH RING

Through sparing prose and spirited dialogue, first-time author Graham spins a brisk adventure packed with plenty of action but very few fully developed characters. In an excavation beneath his palace, the power-mad King Duren finds the remnants of an ancient warrior race and the tools he believes will help him unite the world under one banner (naturally, his). These tools come in the form of five magical rings that supposedly control enormous crystals containing vast arcane power. But when the fifth ring goes missing and ends up in the hands of a young farm boy named Mathew, who happens to be a skilled swordsman, a series of tragic turns leads this unwitting protagonist into a lengthy battle against Duren's forces. Like all stories involving magical rings, this one will endure countless comparisons to Tolkien's Middle Earth epics, but those comparisons aren't particularly apt. With its lack of descriptive detail, this is merely an action tale that happens to be set in a fantasy locale. Smaller in scale than Robert Jordan's enormous volumes and less scholarly than Tolkien, this is still an enjoyable diversion for fantasy fans. (Feb.)