Title: Dragon Stones: Book 1 of The Dragon Stone Saga

Author: Kristian Alva
Author’s Website: Kristian Alva

Sequestered deep in the capital, the tyrannical Emperor Vosper weaves a plan to destroy all the dragons. He succeeds in driving them to the very brink of extinction. Only a handful of dragons and riders remain; living in exile in the desert.
When young Elias Dorgumir finds a carved dragon stone in the forest, it brings empire soldiers to his doorstep, and puts Elias on the run with a bounty on his head.

Is Elias strong enough to halt the evil that is spreading across the land?

Fantasy is my thing, so I was pleased when I got the chance to review Dragon Stones. This book? Well, I don’t know what to say, I really don’t. I don’t want to say fantastic or awesome, the words don’t have enough meaning. From the start Kristian Alva emerges us into her world. She doesn’t info dump or expect us to pick everything up at once. We start simply, with some people slaying dragons in the intro. Then we leave this scene to our main MC, a 15 year old named Alias and his grandmother Carina. Quaint, some description, quite comfortable. I would say I thought it would be something like a modern Lord of the Rings book.

It’s more than Lord of the Rings, this has a lot of that special zing I loved from Harry Potter in it. After Elias finds a Dragon Stone, some history is revealed through his grandmother to him. He doesn’t heed her advice, and terrible things occur which start the adventure the reader awaits. We also start to switch off to the King Mitca and his Dragon Riders, to see what’s going on on the other side of the coin.

It was a little annoying the first time we switched, as I really like staying with a character if I stay with them for so many chapters, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Secrets are revealed, little by little as we begin to travel with the character and his new companion. Even at the very end of the book, the last words reveal a gigantic secret that just made me go ‘AHH?!’

And then it ended.

A part of me hates the fact I read it because I can’t read the second one yet. Hopefully, it comes out soon, I really want it. This book made me cry and ‘feel’ in a good way. I haven’t felt such an old fashioned tug from a book in a long time like this one had on me. I had to finish reading it, and I wanted to buy the second one which is why I wanted to pin myself in ’til Friday reading this series. Unfortunately, there’s not even a second. Yet. (Dangit.)

The editing is well done, a couple of goofups but nothing major that made me lose the flow of the story. I wish the story were longer, it was only a little over 200 pages (around 40,000-45,000 words I estimate). I wanted this thing to be at least 800 pages.

This gets a solid 5 from me!

Want a classic fantasy that is refreshing and different in the same time
Want books around 200 pages, not real short but not long
Like Dragons
Like magic
Are looking for a heart beating adventure.
Like books that have some violence, but doesn’t have any bad language in it.