The Dragonslayer's Sword: The Dragonslayer Series: Book One of Four

If you enjoy a book that let's you discover the story by providing little clues along the way this book will hook you in and be very worth your time. Enjoy!

Very enjoyable book, good characters, interesting storyline which kept my interest piqued.

This is a Excellent story, but rather tough to understand what is going on with the storyline at first. Persever and the storyline resolves itself to a Great Story. The MC Astrid is a damaged child (covered on scars) being carted around by the Child Seller until he finds someone willing to buy her. She thinks of herself as a Monster because of her looks and history.

This story is centric, revealing a small portion of a larger world. There’s some interesting ideas on magic that I’ve never seen before. I’m not a fan of dragons in this iteration, but I get the sense that there’s more coming. I also feel like the female lead wasn’t as strong and independent as she should have been after a decade of smithing. Decent first book.

Well, thus was certainly a different read for me. I love paranormal, adventure, and steamy sex scenes. While there were absolutely no sex scenes, steamy or otherwise, there wss lots of adventure and creative imagination going on. Different kind if story, but entertaining.

And writing to match in excellency. A fascinating magic and world building that supports it. I was hooked and annoyed those around me because I wouldn’t put my phone down.

This is the first book I have read/listened to by this author and I have book 2 waiting in my queue. I enjoyed the overall world created here and characters in it. I did however have issues with the excessive slave trade and holding. Being sold into slavery seemed normal amongst every group of peopleAnd no one seemed to try to escape. “Don’t want to be a slave don’t get caught”- except people weren’t going somewhere unsafe, they were just living their life and taken. Lots people were randomly sold into slavery. The slave trader that initially had Astrid was going to kill her to make up for lost money if he couldn’t sell her, yet in the same chapter was so sad to see her go and concerned for her safety? Secondly, I like the magic, but there was some there I feel lacked explanation- like how someone can believe they can make a missing body part appear and be useful, yet those without the magic couldn’t see it. Which is fine for those times in the book the non magic people then saw items floating in mid air when the magic user was holding it in their imaginary body part. Problem is, there were other times the person was using their imaginary body part and non magic users noted nothing strange. Great idea, just some bumps in the follow through- unless I missed something?. I liked the dragons, the distinction in types, their abilities and the magic surrounding them. This book has a lot of evolution. Often, the story seems to go one way, then without hints to it, we learn more information and realize there’s really something else going on. It is quite a complex book, yet not convoluted or difficult to understand.
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This is the first book I have listened to by this author/narrator ( Resa Nelson ) and I feel she did a fine job. Not many authors also narrate, and not all should. I did have to speed the book up more than usual, but that’s not really an issue. Some characters had barely distinguishable voices and others were distinct, but I did not have issues understanding which character was speaking due to the writing. She reads a bit more than performs the book, however I still enjoyed listening and her voice is pleasant. I look forward to listening to the next book.——-

There are no explicit sex scenes, excessive gory violence, or swearing. ——-

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review.
Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.

Story 4/5
Narration 3.5/5

I'm actually giving this book a 2.5 but rounded up because it's easier. First, I didn't finish (I'll explain why in a minute), but I also appreciate all the hard work the author put into this. The story itself has a lot of potential. Sadly, it reads more like a first draft than a polished novel. Second, I was listening to it on audio and the narrator sounded like a robot. She didn't do the story any favors. I made it 3.5 hours in before I decided to stop wasting my time.

Let's dig into the issues.
1. World building--lots of potential here, but I felt like things were half described or overly described. For instance, all the blacksmithing was too much for me. I didn't pick this book up to learn how to make a sword. But I feel like I could fake it now because it was talked about so much.
2. Character building--After three hours I still didn't like or care what happened to Astrid. I had such high hopes in the first chapter or two, but then we skipped years with no explanation of what happened in between. I wasn't even clear on how far we skipped. In the beginning, Astrid is young, scared, and fearing death if the guy who bought her couldn't sell her. It also bothered me that she kept referring to the place she came from as "the bad place" but we don't know what was so bad about it. I tried to chalk that up to her being really young, but when the violet-eyed guy finds her as an adult, she still refers to it as the "bad place" with no further explanation.
3. Everything felt emotionally distant, and I don't think that was just because of the narrator. I was being told what the author wanted me to know. I never felt like I was being shown anything but expected to just accept that Astrid was upset because the author told me she was.
4. Repetition--I had a hard time settling into the story because of all the repetitive words. I never relaxed and forgot I was reading/listening to a book. I read to escape, and all I wanted was to escape from the constant repetition of words and thought processes that didn't make any sense.
5. The narrator sounded like when you have your computer read your paper to you. There was no emotion, no excitement or fear. She was very articulate, making sure to enunciate every consonant. Several times I just wanted to scream, "Are you alive at all?"

I could go on, but I won't. Giving a rating was hard even though I didn't enjoy the book and felt it was riddled with very fixable problems. It should be a 1 because I didn't finish it. It could have been a 2 because I was very glad I got a free copy through StoryOrigin to review. It could have been a 3 because my biggest issue with it was that it was missing things that could have easily been addressed and added. In the end, I settled on the 2.5 out of respect for the effort put into it. Amazon of course doesn't have the ability to give half stars--so the marked 3.

1-5 scale and what it means:
1: I couldn’t even finish it / just plain bad
2: I hope I didn’t pay for this / disappointing
3: I didn’t hate it, but it was still missing something / forgettable but inoffensive
3.5: On the line between good and ok / like, not love
4: Solid mind candy / worth reading
4.5: So very close to perfection! / must read
5: I could not put it down and I’m still thinking about it! / a true treasure