Path of the Warrior
Series: Keverynn Trilogy, #1
Author: Melissa Stone
Genre: Fantasy
Book Description:
Ashrinn Chimekin is a Fugitive Recovery Agent tasked with helping the crew of the Shrike in their pursuit of the rogue Cult of Atraxia. When something goes horribly wrong during an infiltration attempt on the cult’s compound, Ashrinn and the crew find themselves on a strange, new world. Worse yet, the cultists made their way to this new world as well.
Told that the capture of the cultists will lead them back home, the simple task becomes much harder when Ashrinn and the crew discover the cultists have allied themselves with the Darkriders, people who will stop at nothing to gain total control over their world. And making matters worse, the cultists have gained mysterious, dangerous magic powers…
Ashrinn forges alliances with the Dragonlords, the force in opposition to the Darkriders, in hopes of stopping both the cultists and the Darkriders once and for all. As she fights, she finds herself getting closer to uncovering the mystery behind the black sword that appears when she’s in dire need – and if it will affect her desire to return home.
Review:
This review is going to break from my standard, rambling format, as I do not have a lot to say. I enjoyed the book, and I am interested in seeing the next book, as there are some ideas expressed in the world-building that make me very interested in seeing how they are going to be explored. Particularly, the healers – especially the healers of Keverynn – swear an oath not do anything to those they would heal against the person’s wishes.
This oath seems like it is going to clash against someone’s interest in using more effective ways than physical torture to get information out of a prisoner from the Darkriders (these are the wyvern people, and they are attacking everyone else and trying to take over the world). I want to see how this situation, or others like it, develop.
I am also kind of frustrated with the main characters for basically having a superiority complex where they think they’re good for trying not to kill and not employing tactics like physical torture in an effort to get information, when it’s just as barbaric, just as much a violation of someone’s interests, to attempt to coerce them by confusing them and getting their confidences by “helping” them against their will. Or apprehending and imprisoning people who’d rather be free. The villains in the story are pretty detestable, but there were definitely times that I found the protagonists’ ethics and culture to be detestable, too.
But this is not an “I don’t like the book” kind of frustration. It’s totally expected that people from the main characters’ society might feel that way. A lot of people do! I am quite interested in seeing if the dynamics here and the clash of different values develops through the series in a way that’s exploratory.
The rest of the world-building is also neat and expansive. I’m not aware of any flaws or inconsistency in the world-building, which covers five subspecies of dragons and wyverns, and each of the dragons has their own particular talent. There were also lots of other creatures, both animals and humanoids, and the humanoids have various different cultures which were interesting. I liked the intuitive magic that gets revealed fairly late on in the book, though sometimes the magical abilities seemed a bit contrived. For example, no one knows portal magic, yet they rapidly come to some speculations and act on them: this seemed very odd to me. But perhaps, if I understood how the magic worked better, it would make sense.
I also enjoyed the fact that the dragons are fairly active agents, and there is even an instance where a dragon goes behind a rider’s back in a quite notable way. I did find it a little odd that it seems like it’s the Dragonlords – human riders – who rule and make a lot of the decisions, when I’d expect it to be the dragons themselves in a world like this, where the dragons live far longer and are quite independent creatures. But maybe the riders are usually speaking for the dragons even though that’s not quite clear, since most dragons don’t like to or can’t speak in human languages.
All in all, the world-building is expansive and detailed, giving the impression of a very fleshed-out world, and neat.
However, I found the characters to be flat and I couldn’t relate to them at all. They’re quite complex, with complicated issues and dynamics, and they change throughout the story. It’s not contrived or inconsistent, but they just fell flat to me, and they had no voice. This especially made conversations hard to read, and it also made it difficult for me to keep them straight and remember who they were, or even track which physical description went with which name.
Nonetheless, there were some very interesting dynamics between several of the characters, and I would like to see where some of their relationships go or take them.
Enthralled By Love 