Title & Author: Heritage of Power series (Books 1-4: Dragon Storm, Revelations, Origins, Unraveled), Lindsay Buroker
Genre & Publication Date: Fantasy, 12/26/17 (book one)
Book Description: From Book One: Dragon Storm:
“Born with a secret power he must hide…
Telryn “Trip” Yert has always been a little odd, with hunches that are too accurate to explain. Magic is feared and forbidden in Iskandia, so he’s struggled his whole life to hide his eccentricities. As a boy, he was forced to watch his mother’s execution. Her crime? Witchcraft.
Understandably, Trip wants nothing to do with the power that lurks within him, always threatening to reveal itself. Instead, he dedicates himself to serving as an officer in the king’s army, to battling pirates and imperial conquerors. He longs to become a soldier as respected and renowned as the legendary General Zirkander.
But his country is in need of more than a soldier.
After disappearing for over a thousand years, dragons have returned to the world. A few of them are willing to be allies to mankind, as they were millennia before, but far more want to destroy or enslave humans and claim the world for themselves.
There are few people left with the power to fight dragons. For reasons he doesn’t understand, Trip may be one of those people. But if he chooses to learn more about his heritage and the power he can wield, he risks losing everyone he loves and everything he longs to be.”
First Line: Trip reveled in the cool wind rushing past his face.
My Take: The books were provided to me by the author for review.
I really loved the concept of this one, the earnest young pilot trying to live his life despite being different than everyone else and coming to learn that this difference is far bigger than he ever imagined. He’s likable and, at first, charmingly uncertain of himself. I also loved the second protagonist, Rysha, who is the only woman training to join the elite corps of the military. Just as tall as Trip, highly intelligent, she’s eager to prove herself worthy of her post, even if her spectacles sometimes fog up while running those military obstacle courses.
Their dynamic is heart-warming and sometimes fraught when their goals/situations put them on different sides. I liked this conflict and the way it seemed like their destinies weren’t headed in the same direction. All good angst. Books 1 and 2 had me sweeping through the pages but things started to feel stale as we headed into book 3 and 4. Trip is still bemoaning who and what he in book three. What was once charming uncertainty started to grate on me. Rysha remains a strong character throughout but hadn’t seemed to progress out of her second-guessing herself and her abilities–and seemed to contemplate her relationship with Trip and her future way too much. In fact, they both did that.
So, this all sounds like I didn’t like the series, but I did. It’s fun, the dialogue and banter are fantastic, the turmoil of the world is full of awesome Fantasy elements. I think the issue is that the series is taking too long. Too many side plots and not enough forward momentum with the main characters frustrated me.
The Magical: As always, Buroker’s world-building is stellar, integrated with loads of history, conflict between nations, and the opposing ways in which each country views magic–some violently superstitious while others train in it to varying degrees of competence.
The Mundane: This series would have been much better if it’d been 3 books instead of 5 (At least, I think it’s ending at five books). The stories would’ve been tighter without so much unnecessary digression into tangent storylines that weren’t all that interesting. Character development and relationships would’ve been more sharply defined instead of drawn out in repetitive themes and conflicts.
Summary of Thoughts: Book one, Dragon Storm, is only $0.99 on Amazon. This series is fun, light reading. It’s perfect if you’re just looking for something to pass the time and you don’t want to concentrate too hard. You’ll enjoy it, you definitely will, but it won’t move you.
Many thanks to author Lindsay Buroker for providing copies of the books to review!
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Author of speculative fiction 