The Last Dragonlord

 What I Liked

*The world building:  For instance! Dragon Lords have an interesting origin, as related by the world's bards, and the fact that they deliberately obfuscate their own lore to keep "truehumans" in the dark is a further interesting wrinkle. Yeah, "truehumans" are actual humans and "truedragons" are actual dragons. Dragon Lords are were-dragons. 

*Sensory detail: The author is fantastic at laying out a scene on paper, whether it is riding out a storm in trade boat, riding through a town market, or flying over the countryside. 

*The use of rotating perspectives: the reader gets a sense for the sprawling intrigue of this regency crisis when they can see how many interested parties are doing stuff outside the council scenes, which would be difficult to convey from a more limited perspective.

*The relationship between the leads.  I was afraid that this would be one of those "dancing around each other until the final page" sort of things, particularly with the love triangle. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this wasn't the case. 

*the ending: No cliffhanger or last-minute "got-cha". It is a satisfying resolution. 

What I didn't like

*The pacing: It takes forever for this book to get anywhere. About 100 pages pass before the two leads met face-to-face, and that was a "didn't recognize/get their name" sort of meeting. 

*The rotating perspectives: So many perspectives switching so quickly, and each one introduces more characters, often new characters that might not show up again until much later, it's hard to keep them all straight. I often found myself thinking "Who is this guy, and what is his deal again?"  It also contributes to the very slow pacing. 

*The climax (not the ending): A lot of Drama-Preserving Handicaps being thrown around in an attempt to maintain tension. At one point, I had to roll my eyes at a particularly egregious one. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "The Last Dragonlord" a B+

Click here for my previous book review:  PathFinder - First Edition - Core Rulebook

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

New book up! Catalyst for Glorious Change!

PathFinder - First Edition - Core Rulebook

After Wizards of the Coast did that One D&D OGL debacle, I decided to explore other TTRPG systems, and the first one on my list was Pathfinder. I've heard that the first edition was nicknamed "D&D 3.75 E", so I decided to start there for the similarities. 

My first impression: "A lot crunchier than D&D 5E". I had read the books for D&D 3.5 E, but I hadn't actually played it. My play experience is with 5E exclusively. There are a lot more skills in PF 1E, as well as tiers for status effects and conditions, and also a lot of different kinds of bonuses. On the one hand, I like this because D&D 5E can be pretty restrictive and limiting, and on the other hand, this is a lot more to keep track of. I spoke with someone at a Rennaissance Festival about this, and he remarked that he had to use a smart phone app to manage it all. 

I like greater depth in the classes compared to D&D 5E, the barbarian, for instance. In D&D 5E, there really is no reason not to rage immediately at the start of each encounter, because you could keep it up through the encounter and were unlikely to run out of rages in a single day. Here, raging is a more strategic resource, bestowing advantages and disadvantages (unable to spell-cast while raging is hardly a disadvantage). 

CRAFTING! I really like the idea of crafting items, but the rules in D&D 5E are so scant in terms of crafting, and those that exist are so onerous, that me and one of my players had to homebrew a system for his character to make more types of poisons than basic and in a reasonable amount of game time (we based it off how a wizard can learn new spells, but added a research function; he wanted to be this "artisan poison crafter"). 

All that said, I'm not sure what sort of a grade to assign, because the actual experience is in playing, and I'm not going to play 1st edition. By now, I suspect that PF 1E tables are going to be harder to find than PF 2E tables. I mostly read this to understand how it differs from both PF 2E and D&D 5E. Yes, I am a nerd! 

Trickster Eric Novels gives " PathFinder - First Edition - Core Rulebook" a Thumbs Up

Click here for my next book review: The Last Dragonlord

Click here for my previous book review: The Selection Series book 4 - The Heir

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

New book up! Catalyst for Glorious Change!

The Selection Series book 4 - The Heir"

This is the fourth book in the Selection Series, but it is the start of a new plot line, so it is a good jumping on point. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. In fact, starting here helps me empathize with the new protagonist, Princess Eadlyn, the daughter of the original two leads. 

Her country used to have a caste system based on numbers? That's weird. Her parents weren't ALWAYS this fairy-tail-style romantic couple that she sees every day? Outright bizzare. So it's nice that way.  

This is a first-person perspective and it has an engaging narrative voice. We have a front row seat to Eadlyn's perspective on things, which is a big deal when she's grown up showing a particular careful image to the press, and now has to get more intimate with the Selection Boys. 

It's basically The Bachelorette, but with much higher stakes. And this time, it's basically a long-term publicity stunt to buy time for her father. He needs something to distract the country from civil strife while he works on a solution. Eadlyn turns out to be /terrible/ at this, because, as written previously, she has grown up hiding her true self from basically everyone, including herself, so she has no sense of perspective. 

The overall narrative meanders a lot. There doesn't seem to have been any sort of plan for Eadlyn's Selection other than "gather a bunch boys and film Eadlyn interacting with them". Sometimes big things happen out of nowhere, like Rule of Drama. Especially the ending. 

The ending is a big load of drama. It makes sense, sort of. The very first page foreshadows the ending, with its big shift of weight, and Eadlyn's shift of focus. So that feels earned. The other half of the drama bomb feels staged. Yes, staged, like the author is staging the events of Eadlyn's life in the same haphazard way that Eadlyn is staging the events of the Selection. If not for that, then I would think more highly of the ending. As it is, it feels like a manufactured cliffhanger, rather than a shifting a narrative weight Insert-Disc-Two sort of thing. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "The Selection Series book 4 - The Heir" a C

Click here for my next book review:   PathFinder - First Edition - Core Rulebook

Click here for my previous book review: Shadow Guard - a Second Guard novel

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

PUBLISHED! Catalyst for Glorious Change!

 Hi everyone!

I finally published something! It's been years. The first time in the better part of a decade. I finally got something published.  It truly is a "Catalyst for Glorious Change". ( I hope that doesn't sound to presumptuous ^_~). 

It's not the final book of Journey to Chaos. Unfortunately, that journey continues. What I'm here to talk about now is the start of the journey. 

Yes, Catalyst for Glorious Change is a prequel. It shines a spotlight onto several major characters from Journey to Chaos and what they were doing before Eric arrived on Tariatla. Specifically, it is some of the prep work that Tasio did prior to inviting/bamboozling Eric to Tariatla. 

A lot of this is stuff I planned to include or allude to in the main Journey to Chaos series. In fact, the original draft of Book 5 had this sub-arc that focused on Tiza, and another one explored what growing up as The Trickster's Choice was like for Kallen. Those events were "returned to chaos" and they were reborn as this story, and they formed an adventuring party with similar events for other characters, like Nolien, Basilard and Annala.  

And I got a new cover illustrator! It's been a while.  Laura J Prevost created this for me! 

This is just the ebook cover. The paperback is even cooler! It's a wrap around that continues the motif!

Dropping a link to her website here because she's awesome

The ebook is available on pre-order right now. The release date is April 5th.  A paperback version will be available at that time as well. 

You can find the Amazon sales page at this link here

SO EXCITED THAT I FINALLY PUBLISHED ANOTHER BOOK!

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Just realized that this banner-thing is technically obsolete. Whatever.  I'm still writing Book 5 of Journey to Chaos - The Highest Power!

Read for fun: Shadow Guard - a Second Guard novel

 What I like: 

*the world-building such as the creation myths, the structure of the three guilds, and the role of the Fray in Quarry Town's culture.  

* The character development such as Brindl's budding friendships with Tonio and Xiomara, and the distinctions between the Far World ambassadors. It's really something how Lord Yonda shifts from seeming like the "Fat Bastard" trope to the "Big Fun" trope. 

*starting each chapter with an excerpt from a in-universe royal advice book, which compliments and contrasts its chapter. That's a neat literary device

*the epilogue. It addresses most of the plot threads for a satisfying conclusion. It is also plenty heartwarming while utilizing the same device as the chapter breaks, which creates a different sort of climax than the big fight.

What I DON'T like: 

*the ambigous supernatural element. Brindl is implied to have a kind of foresight at three points in the story, and the Diosa is also implied to have this same ability. Whether this is a real thing or just mundane intuition is never made clear, and not in the fun way. It feels like a plot contrivance. 

*the battle of the climax. It gives the impression that battles are won via the Rule of Drama rather than sound battle tactics, social organization, or sensible decision making. 

*starting the story off with an assassination attempt on Xiomara and then following up with a second one, only to completely drop that angle. All that remains of it is a half-hearted mention in the epilogue. Again, it feels like a tool for cheap drama without payoff. 

*Brindl feels too much like a Pinball Protagonist at times. Pulled in several directions, she seems more like a spectator or messenger than a participant in many events. This is NOT the case overall, as she makes decisions, on her own, that trigger great events and move the plot forward, but these are fewer in number. Like a player character in a scripted video game that can make meaningful choices at story branches, but otherwise does what the NPCs tell them to do.

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Shadow Guard, a Second Guard novel"  a B+

Click here for my next book review: The Selection Series book 4 - The Heir"

Click here for my previous book review: Witchnapped in Westerham (Paranormal Investigation Bureau book 1

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Witchnapped in Westerham (Paranormal Investigation Bureau book 1 (read for fun)

When I read the blurb on the back, I was expecting that to be the set-up. You know, all that stuff in the first couple of chapters. Instead, it's more like a synopsis of 80% of the book. The story takes its time getting started, and the protagonist is a Pinball Protagonist until the final act, and then gets literally shoved into a passive role for the rest of the book. 

The scenic detail is nice and seamlessly integrated into the narration because the protagonist is a professional photographer. Also, I appreciate the lack of twists for the sake of twists. My genre savvy told me that Angelica would be the mastermind or involved in the scheme somehow, but she is exactly what she told Lily she was from the start. The actual culprit is very obvious, which I found refreshing. It's a more satisfying culmination in the climax that way. 

Personally, it feels like mystery-box gimmicks and plot contrivance are the only reasons that this book extends for basically two hundred pages. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Witchnapped in Westerham (Paranormal Investigation Bureau book 1" a C-

Click here for my next book review:  Read for fun: Shadow Guard - a Second Guard novel 

Click here for my previous book review: Read for Fun - Sword Art Online - Alicization Uniting" Volume 14

Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.