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MY ⭐️ RATING: 4.5/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
THIRTY YEARS AFTER THE ECHOES OF FATE CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY, AN ANCIENT EVIL STIRS ONCE MORE.
Millennia in the dark has left these lost and forgotten monsters hungry for war. The people of Illian can do nothing but rely on their peacekeepers, the Dragorn.
Are the dragon riders ready for what has been buried under their feet?
Gideon Thorn, Master of the Dragorn, can feel the Third Age coming to an ominous end. With Inara Galfrey and her dragon by his side, they must investigate the return of this ancient evil.
Alijah Galfrey has only one talent – getting into trouble. When he isn’t drinking, the half-elf is gambling his life away in the pursuit of relics no one cares about. Now, he finds himself at the sharp end of history. Can he take charge of his own future, or is he destined to be controlled by others?
Deep in the mines of Vengora, something ancient has been found, and the dwarves of Dhenaheim would go to war with the North over it. After sixty years in the world of men, Doran Heavybelly must finally return to his homeland if any peace is to be found…
MY REVIEW
Quaintrell can really tell a fantastic story, the first part of this I had some adjusting to do, due to the fact that this takes place thirty years after the events of the first trilogy. So characters I’ve known have grown old, older or have even passed, but when this starts ramping up, it really ramps up. I’m not going to say I struggled with the first part, but there was a slight getting used to new characters as the main POV’s, once that was over it was nothing but an enjoyment of a fantastic story that felt like a mixture A Song of Ice and Fire in Middle Earth while having a Star Wars-like undertone to it with a reluctant hero, the chosen one, the mentor, twins, and an evil overlord. I could go a step further and say that the Dragorn feel a bit like the Jedi, but I may be just grasping at straws at this point.
There are a lot of characters from the first trilogy that make their way back, like Tauren, Gideon, Galanör, and my personal favorite in this trilogy so far, Doran Heavybelly, who gets quite a bit of great development and steals every scene he’s in. While it was great to see some familiar faces, the focus of this trilogy is put mainly on the newer characters of Inara, Alijah, and Vighon, as well as a new threat called The Crow and Karakulak. Alijah took a bit for me to like, but I did start to like him a lot more around the 50-60% range as I got to know him a lot better. Quaintrell did a great job of making sure these characters were not only very diverse, but also flawed in a way that makes you have hope for them.
The story really hooked me with its dark and tense scenes throughout the journey that the characters were making, with incredibly epic battles with orcs, dwarves and dragons. There was an emotional investment that just made it more real as Quaintrell didn’t hold back and was willing to invoke his inner GRRM, by not being afraid to kill off big names. This series gets a lot of comparisons to The Bound and the Broken, I have done this previously, and they are warranted, but Quaintrell is definitely telling a completely different, yet incredibly compelling story. The world building is incredible and his writing just feels like it has aged 30 years, like the story has from the first trilogy. With dwarves, elves, orcs, werewolves, dragons, dragon riders, mages, and creatures called Dwellers that make orcs look puny, this really had it all, and I’m ready for more.
It wasn’t all sunshine and kittens though, I like Steven Brand as a narrator, which I have praised previously, but after coming off my last few books, I’ve noticed that Brands narration style can be a bit monotonous. He’s a great reader of words and sounds a lot like Rufus Sewell (A Knight’s Tale, Tristan & Isolde) which is a nice smooth tone, but the biggest problem I found with his narration is that the characters all basically sound the same. The only time there’s really any difference is when two of the same genders are speaking and a slight variation is done. Even with dragons are telepathy speaking, it sounds the exact same as the person it’s speaking to, and this hurt my experience some. On the production side of things, the audio completely skipped over chapter 23 like it didn’t exist, and then the whispersync didn’t work for part of chapter 25. If there was a better differentiation between the voices (which will continue to be an issue), and that issue with the production wasn’t there, I probably would’ve given this 5 stars, because I did enjoy the story immensely.
Wolfmantula.com 