Family doctor explores magic in trilogy

A Martinez family physician said he hopes the fantasy land he created as a diversion from the daily grind also will serve the same purpose for his readers.

Dr. Benjamin Towe released his final book of the trilogy about the fictional Land of Donothor - The Death of Magick - at the beginning of November.

"My goal would be for someone to feel like they could get into one of these books and sit there and read it and they are in a fantasy world away from everything that might be (weighing) on their mind," Towe said of the books that make up The Trilogy of the Land of Donothor. "(I hope they) just enjoy that for a couple of hours and get away from reality.''

Towe has practiced family medicine in Martinez since 1981, and joined the practice of Dr. Ronald Jowers, on Oak Street North in Martinez, in April.

It was his time playing Dungeons and Dragons in the early 1980s and his hero J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the The Lord of the Rings series, that served as the inspiration for the first book in his trilogy, Deathquest to Parallan.

Towe published all of his books through AuthorHouse, a company that assists authors in publishing their works.

"In my mind, the books are sort of a blend of the role-playing game and the fantasy world that Tolkien created," Towe said.

His view of magic differs greatly from the magic depicted in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

"With magic, it is nice to point a wand, say a word and throw a spell. But in my mind, magic takes energy and effort, and its spellcasters have to conserve that energy because the next chamber may have a meaner monster and the magic spells require the little spell components that you have to put together," he said.

Deathquest to Parallan begins the trilogy by following a young prince and his comrades on a quest to protect his land - Donothor, which is under attack. The quest leads the group to Parallan, the land of three suns, where they participate in a great conflict.

The second installment, The Orb of Chalar, is a prequel to Deathquest to Parallan. It explains how a spell gone wrong connected the worlds of Donothor and Parallan and led to the three-book story.

"Through a quirk, a mistake, an imperfect spell cast by a sorcerer, a gate between these two worlds was created 1,000 years earlier," Towe said.

The final book, The Death of Magick, continues the story as the strongest and weakest of the worlds attempt to unravel the mysteries of ancient parchments and devise a plan to defeat the demon threatening both worlds.

Towe said he had a manuscript of the first book in the early 1980s but didn't do anything with it until two of his daughters and his son-in-law put the manuscript on disc for him last year.

"The thing that spurred me was the gift was from the children," Towe said.

Towe published Deathquest to Parallan, which he said was 20 years in the making, in November 2005. The Orb of Chalar was released in April.

Towe attributes his imagination to his grandmother. The largest challenge he faced while writing the trilogy was the naming. He often enlisted assistance from his family and sought inspiration by watching the subtitles of The Lord of the Rings movies.

When he had trouble with names, Towe called upon his medical background.

"I had a lot of fun, particularly with the second book, doing aberrations of the spelling of generic and brand-name pharmaceutical items," Towe said.

He wrote in Cellexa the elvish king, named after Celexa the antidepressant, and a dwarf named Al Prazolam, dubbed in honor of alprazolam, the generic version of Xanax.

"I like to inject a little bit of humor into the characters," he said.

The doctor's books are available at www.authorhouse.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.borders.com, and Towe will have his first book-signing in January at Borders.