Looking For a Good Book

Bards sing songs of the hero Elysia Dayne – she’s a hero, monster slayer, and renowned for killing a dragon in one-on-one combat. Sometimes, though, the bards build up the truth to make a better story. There was a time, after all, that Elysia admired the dragons and thought of them as beautiful.

Even a hero needs to work and Elysia takes on a job to rescue Princess Isabella Solemaine who’s been taken prisoner by goblins in the dangerous Borderlands. Knowing that one of the keys to a successful  rescue is careful planning, Elysia prepares for everything she can think of, yet still things go wrong and she and Isabella are left to wander through unfriendly territory. And in case it wasn’t bad enough that the goblins are unhappy to have lost their prize, Niemirian raiders are tracking the pair, looking to kill them both.

It will take time and trust and Isabella will slowly come around to Elysia and a soft romance will develop, but the Niemirian challengers may cut any romance short.

Author Wil Chan does a very nice job of creating an interesting protagonist in Elysia Dayne, but muddies the strong rescue story by mixing in Elysia’s back story as well. The two stories don’t mix well so the jumping back and forth in time doesn’t build the story and instead interrupts it.

The final fight sequence is exciting and Chan writes it quite well, but it goes on and on and on. I’m not sure, but I think the last 10% of the entire book is just one fight scene. It’s hard to sustain excitement when the combatants are constantly on their last legs but manage one more, one more, one more stab, slice, or cut. Even here, though, it might have worked if the book was leading up to this battle (I’m thinking of another fantasy author who writes a heck of a lot of fight scenes, but makes it work) but instead, half the book was back-story.

The ‘romance’ is subtle. It’s more longing and friendship than anything else, and it works nicely.

In general, a decent book, but I’m not eagerly looking for the next volume.

Looking for a good book? Under an Azure Sky by Wil Chan is a multi-layered fantasy that work on one layer, but not so much on the other.  If sword fighting scenes are your favorite thing to read, this might be right up your alley.

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Under an Azure Sky

author: Wil Chan

series: Elysia Dayne #1

publisher: Independently published

paperback, 478 pages