Fantasy
DragonSpell
Back of the Book:
Once a slave, Kale is given the unexpected opportunity to become a servant to Paladin. Yet this young girl has much to learn about the difference between slavery and service.
A desperate search begins...
A small band of Paladin’s servants rescue Kale from danger but turn her from her destination: The Hall, where she was to be trained. Feeling afraid and unprepared, Kale embarks on a perilous quest to find the meech dragon egg stolen by the foul Wizard Risto. First, she and her comrades must find Wizard Fenworth. But their journey is threatened when a key member of the party is captured, leaving the remaining companions to find Fenworth, attempt an impossible rescue, and recover the egg whose true value they have not begun to suspect…
Weaving together memorable characters, daring adventure, and a core of eternal truth, Dragonspell is a finely crafted and welcome addition to the corpus of fantasy fiction.
My Review:
This was an exciting, cute, and humorous book. The adventures kept you guessing, and the characters made you laugh. It had suspense, action, and a lot of fun times. It was also an excellent allegory. I loved how Donita’s representation of Paladin made me reexamine how I interact with God. I’m so glad I read it.
The only thing I didn’t care for was part of her writing style. I was confused many a time while reading about an action sequence. It seemed like she would leave out whole thought processes or events. I had no idea how the characters went from situation A to suddenly having situation B going on. (And after starting the next book in the series, I can see that her writing has improved.)
Also, this book felt like it was written for a sixth grader in some instances with the sentence structure and vocabulary, but in another sense it had so many large allegorical concepts that it felt like it was written for an adult. The description didn’t lie—it really is a book for all ages. I really liked it, though, and will definitely be reading the rest of the series.