Book Review of The Lost Heir (The Dragonath Chronicles Book 1) by Andi O’Connor

BLURB:

Darrak leads a typically straightforward and dull life until his dreams become plagued with visions of a peculiar and distant world. Waking up to a brilliant purple sun looming in the sky, Darrak is met by a mysterious violet-eyed sorcerer who whisks him away from the struggling Earth.

Thrown into the clutches of a foreign world where magic is reality and not all is as it seems, Darrak embarks on a journey where he is forced to come to terms with his past and do what he can to shape the future.

Accompanied by a swordswoman, a prince, and a young sorceress, he must overcome cunning plots of treachery and betrayal to discover the strength to stand against a destructive black magic and an enemy who is a master at deception.

MY REVIEW:

Once again, here’s a book that’s been on my kindle since 2015.  So, I had no idea what the book was about before I started reading.  In some ways, I enjoy not knowing the blurb or storyline.  But, I want to say that the cover is spot on for it’s genre.  I knew it would be about magic.

Still, I came away from the story feeling ambient about the novel.  First off, as noted in a prior review, there are too many characters that get introduced all at once, and with some incredibly strange names.  There’s nothing wrong with trying to make your new world amazing, but think about the readers.  Even after finishing the book, I can’t tell you who some of the characters are by their names.  That’s bad. 

And, it is an amazing world that Andi O’Connor built. The boy/girl finding they are more than they seemed is a well-used trope, but it works here.  The biggest problem I had with the storytelling is, every character talks and acts the same way.  Even Darrak, who grew up on Earth and was going to college, would not be talking in the same high-brow syntax of the people from Mysttandia.  Characters that talk the same way just means the author doesn’t understand how to write compelling dialogue.  Which is strange as there are just huge chunks of dialogue as a way of explaining everything.  Basically, this is a dialogue-driven story versus a character-driven story.  Sometimes I got lost in who was doing the actual talking and had to go back to find out. 

And that would explain why the characters weren’t as dimensional as they could’ve been.  I mean, Darrak just lost his home and his parents, yet he does very little mourning.  Even when the High Sorcerer is murdered, there is very little emotion. 

Anyway, I liked the premise of the story. We have a slower-paced action adventure story with intrigue, a budding romance and lots of magic.  You can’t go wrong there.  I do recommend it as most readers seemed to enjoy it.  I give it 3 stars.