As you will have noticed, I took the festive season off. Now I’m back!

Happy New Year to you all.

Today I’m posting a book review. I finished reading this book a while ago, but have only just got around to reviewing it.

Overview.

This book is the second part of the Kane Saga. It continues where the first book left off.

Story

Elijah, the prince who was believed to be dead, has returned and is now betrothed to Princess Sienna.

The dragons, hidden in human form, are making themselves known. 

But Elijah has to go on a quest and leave his beloved behind. The dragons tell him that two things are needed to defeat the Master. One is a staff and the other a time. 

He sets off with his trusty friend, Salah, a grumpy dragon called Maelor and a feisty elf.

Needless to say, all does not go according to plan.

The plot is interesting and gripping. But sadly, it does not resolve the problems but leaves you hanging in the air, waiting for the next book. I don’t like series that do this. It’s a serial, not a series. Although in all fairness, Ms Williams calls it a Saga, not a series.

Blurb

Having grown up in Rheanydd, all Elijah wanted to focus on was entering the annual Hollom horse race. A year later, he’s one of Princess Sienna’s Elite bodyguards in Adelith, where he learns more about his hazy past every day.

King Roderick’s solution to Eli being revealed as the missing crown heir is to marry Eli to Princess Sienna and combine their two bloodlines. But when a body is found with a blood-splattered message and the queen reveals a secret about Eli’s magic, a wedding is the last thing on everyone’s mind.

Eli starts to doubt the Dragon Elders’ motives when their answers only come in the form of cryptic messages. Yet he can’t help but feel a connection between the dragons and himself. So, he agrees to fulfil their task to get the relics before The Master’s Agents of Cyran.

But the agreement between the dragons and his father is due to end soon, setting the dragons free from their human forms and able to rebuild their race. Unless The Master gains control of them.

Can Eli and the dragons work together to stop The Master from getting the relics, or will he gain control over the dragons to rebuild the world and become a god?

Characters.

I enjoyed the characters in this book. They are all different, with their own characteristics. Maelor is always grumpy. Salah is always loyal. 

They are all well-drawn.

Writing.

Sadly, like the first book, this is riddled with errors. I found a number on every page. Grammar, wrongly used words, typos, syntax. Also, I understand that the author is from Somerset, England, yet at least once she uses the American, ‘gotten’. While not wrong in an American book, it struck a harsh chord here.

There were other things not strictly wrong, but that gave me a strange picture. Like ‘Eli dropped his eyes to the ground.’ Too many superfluous words, mainly prepositions, too. 

Punctuation also left a lot to be desired, too. Often there were commas where there should have been a full stop, and missing commas when someone was named. And there were a few places where I had to go back and read a sentence or paragraph more than once to make sense of it 

This is such a pity, because the story is good, but because of my experience with the writing in the first two books, I am wondering if I can manage to read the next one.