Book Review: Awakening (The Ydron Saga Book 1) by Raymond Bolton

Book Review: Awakening (The Ydron Saga Book 1) by Raymond Bolton

Book Description:

How does a world equipped with bows, arrows and catapults, where steam power is just beginning to replace horses and sailing ships, avert a conquest from beyond the stars?

Prince Regilius has been engineered to combat the Dalthin, a predatory alien species that enslaves worlds telepathically, and to do so he must unite his people. But when his mother murders his father, the land descends into chaos and his task may prove impossible. Faced with slaying the one who gave him life in order to protect his world, he seeks a better way. Set in a vast and varied land where telepaths and those with unusual mental abilities tip the course of events, Awakening goes to the heart of family, friendship and betrayal.

My Review:

After not reading a book for ages, and then a purchase of a new Kindle, I opened it up and found that I started this story.  Seems I bought it back in July 2014.  Hmm.  I started reading from where I’d left off but couldn’t remember any of the story, and it did intrigue me, so went back to the beginning. 

Awakening is an epic fantasy with a vast world and multiple characters and story arcs.  As the blurb states, their planet, their lives are being manipulated by an alien race with telepathic abilities.  The Dalthin are shapeshifters so they can meld into any world they want to dominate to eat.  Yes, eat.  Not very pleasant creatures.  However, when they settle on this new world, they bite off more than they can chew.  Pun intended. 

We have several villain’s in this tale.  The worst is perhaps the Queen.  Not only did she murder the King, now she wants to capture and kill her children.  All for greed and power.  What she doesn’t’ realize is that she is also being used.  She is but a puppet.  An expendable one at that. 

The hero’s are the two children and their trusty friends.  Some don’t survive to see the Change that shapes their world.  There are battles, there are chases and escapes.  Lots of action and adventure, right?  Well, sort of.  For me, this was not a page-turning story.  I set this book down before years ago and forgot it.  Even when I went back to it, it still took me several months to finish the tale.  It’s just didn’t grip me like I wanted.  

Part of the problem is the characters are all the same.  The same thoughts, manners, speech, etc.  You can’t tell a common fold from a royal.  No individualism.  They wee flat and one dimensional.  What makes it worse is that you go along with lots of dialogue between characters and no dialogue tags.  Which is great really.  But they all sounded the same, so sometimes I had to go back and reread to see who was actually doing the talking.  Action beats would’ve been really helpful and would’ve gave the author a chance to add more depth to them.  

I pushed myself though the story as I did want to see how it ended.  It was meh.  There are three other books in the series.  I won’t be reading.  Maybe Bolton has improved his writing.  I’ll never know.  Too many other books to read.  All in all, I do recommend it when on sale.  I give it 3 stars.