I just
can’t get enough of high fantasy, can’t I? I used to only read the bare bones
basic books of this series such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the
like, but I’ve lately been discovering more and more good ones that aren’t
quite as famous and definitely deserve a look!
Enter
Dragon Speaker by Elana A. Mugdan. This author was kind enough to, during this
whole corona craze, make the three books of the Shadow War Saga, of which
Speaker is the first, free on Kindle. I’ve been meaning to read these books for
a while after following the author on Twitter and seeing them recommended by
various people, so what better opportunity is there? Let’s have a look at
Dragon Speaker, shall we? Spoilers ahead.
This epic
tale follows Keriya Nameless, a girl born without magic in a world where having
any form of it is commonplace. After being shunned for this by her homeland her
whole existence and experiencing a life-changing event with the dragon goddess
Shivnath, Keriya and two of her friends set out on a quest, leaving their
homeland behind, in order to save the world and bring down the evil
supernatural war-lord Necrovar with the aid of a dragon.
For what I
want from my standard fantasy story, this hit pretty much all the beats,
honestly! Magical creatures, magic itself, gods and demons, saving the world,
politics, lords and princesses, it’s all there! How’s the execution? For the
most part, really solid! I could just get absolutely lost in Allentria, no
question about it. Not everything is quite touched upon in this book yet, but
holy crap am I excited to read more about this world.
One thing I
especially liked was the gods and demons being active factors in the story.
Usually in the fantasies I read they’ll be brought up, but do little to
nothing. Here, though, Shivnath, Necrovar and the other beings all play
important roles. It can be a bit tedious to sit through Shivnath being cryptic
and refusing to answer questions a lot of the time, but it’s also part of the
charm of having a goddess that is still bound by some form of laws. I am
curious to see what caused her to make an exception for bringing back Keriya of
all people, and giving her powers.
The main
characters aren’t the very best, I’ll be honest about that. Do I actively
dislike any one of them? No, absolutely not! I think they’re fine, I just wish
I got a little more out of them. I didn’t feel any particular strong connection
with any character unless you maybe count the Bogspectre. I don’t know what it
is about it, but I really enjoyed reading about that creature. Just something
about it was oddly charming in a way. Thorion is also pretty good, but other
than them I do not have a very strong “bond” with any of the characters,
including our lead, quite yet. However, this may of course change over the next
two books! Keriya is by no means a bad character, I just didn’t get a whole lot
new out of her. But I do want to follow her and see where she goes next.
The pacing
was fast and the writing was really easy to get into, so that was definitely a
plus. I had a great time just reading this one in just two sittings of a few
hours.
The magic
system is also quite good. It start out simple and element-based, yet there’s
more nuance to it that is later given, with explanations of things such as
“magicthreads” and so forth. I definitely look forward to seeing this expanded
upon in future books as well.
What I
loved the most about this book, though, was the climax. I didn’t particularly
want to put the book down before it, either, but when I got to the highest
point of the story, I was hooked and wouldn’t stop reading until I’d finished
it. I don’t often get gripped this much by a climax, which is definitely a
plus.
I wouldn’t
say Dragon Speaker is flawless or anything, but it definitely has the makings
of the start of a great and memorable series of books. While it isn't perfect, the excitement I felt when reading this (especially the climax), the impact it left and how much I enjoyed reading it warrant it five stars. Looking forward to
Dragon Child!
Rating: 5/5
Please note: The books being free does not affect my judgement for the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment