I found this book as an ARC on BookSirens and was interested enough to check it out. Lucid also has other books published, though I don’t plan on reading those.

Read: July 28 – July 31, 2023
*Self-published author

Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Young Adult
Book contains: blood & battle, manipulation

Purchase a copy from Amazon.ca

[I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.]

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The Writing was Okay, But the Book Was Not for Me

Henry’s mundane life takes a turn the moment he discovers a mysterious golden coin in his family’s garden. Suddenly, his long-time crush Tracey Maxwell is agreeing to go to prom with him, then they’re both sucked into an alternate dimension. There, after a few near-brushes with death, he finds out that he was the one destined to save humanity from King Zarkarius and his Sadarkian army. Together, he teams up with Tracey, a talking cat, and two WWII pilots to save the kingdom.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. I can’t remember reading the synopsis on BookSirens, but I know that it was interesting enough to make me download it and commit to writing a review. Getting into it, I realized that it actually involved people from our world (1945ish and 2022) tumbling through a portal into a sort-of medieval world, which was cool. The premise is incredibly interesting, too, but as I got further into the book, quite a few of the directions the story took were not to my tastes.

I struggled a lot with connecting to the characters. Though each character was unique and well-written, I found it hard to care about what happened to them. Henry is the MC, and though I’ve had no problem connecting with other characters similar to him in other books, I have to admit I didn’t like him all that much. His personal problems and desires didn’t resonate with me, and I didn’t like some of the actions he took throughout the story. Meanwhile, Tracey felt like she was only in the story as the token love interest for Henry, and I didn’t feel like Edward and Conor needed to be there either—the story could’ve gone on without them at all and run just as smoothly.

The pacing seemed to be all over the place for me. There was so much happening in this book that it felt that we were rushing from one thing to the next without spending the proper amount of time on it, but at the same time, every scene seemed to move so slowly. I suppose this effect was created by how much exposition the book had. There was no mystery. Either things were revealed in long-winded dialogue (Katrina and Zakarius), or a character is shown with a flashback scene to their entire backstory and motivations (Slyvanon). A lot of the book felt like the author built their world and tried to stuff as much information into the story as possible without much care in building interest in that information first.

The writing quality wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t blow-my-mind good, which is another reason behind my middle-of-the-pack rating. The grammar and sentence structure were well put together, and the author put effort into getting it properly edited, which I highly admire in self-published books, but the story itself was straightforward with a lot of exposition and not many interesting plot twists, which I typically enjoy in a book. It’s good for the type of reader who doesn’t want anything too intense while still enjoying an adventure and battles of good and evil.

In short, the writing and the story were better than some others I’ve read, but there’s certainly room for improvement. It is, however, well-written and entertaining enough that readers of this genre and storyline will love it. It’s not the kind of book I—personally—would recommend to others, but if it’s something you’d be interested in, definitely give it a try.

Related Reviews:

*Dark Innocence by P.J. Alexander*
*The Aodh Generations Book 1: The Gift of Marmidon by Tiffany M. Rhys*
*Dragonia Book 1: Rise of the Wyverns by Craig A. Price Jr.*