One Realm Beyond

I received this book from the author/publisher for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

When you're born with a gift, it's your responsibility to protect it.

Cantor D'Ahma is a character who has a tendency to take things too seriously. He has a rebellious nature about him and isn't fond of following orders. However once his world begins to fall apart, all he wants is his old life back to normal.

I adored the characters of One Realm Beyond! Cantor, Bixby, Bridger, and Dukmee are an entertaining group to say the least, but they also work together and help each other in ways that really makes them dynamic.

As for the story, I considered it to be very slow. It took almost the entire first half of the book before anything “bad” even happened. Yes, there were some challenging dilemmas in the beginning, but nothing of consequence happened, making everything look really easy. Everything also happened really fast -I know I just said it was too slow, so I'll explain! The action scenes began and ended too quickly. It took a lot of time to lead up to those action scenes and then they were over almost as soon as they had started.

I also didn't like that I would be reading one chapter and then the next chapter was taking place over a month later without any warning. This left a lot of confusion.

However, as I mentioned before, the characters more than made up for the loss of conflict. Their personalities are just so complex and well captured, especially for Fantasy. It's a clean book, no cursing, sexual comments or scenes, and as I mentioned before, the action is almost non-existent. So in the end, I was actually very pleased with the book.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it to younger teens and readers who appreciate character development.

This is a LiteratureApproved.com review.

Meh.

Honestly, for how well this book started off, I was expecting so much more from it. In truth, I might have been expecting too much.

The book started off wonderfully, then slacked off a little around the halfway point. But, it wasn't until the incredibly rushed ending that I really started having problems.

I didn't really mind the way things resolved - it was inventive but I would prefer if the book was more stand-alone than it was. However, the problem was that the character the author decided to follow for the ending was fairly far removed from the main part of the action. So really, what we got was being told what happened by a third party.

I really had problems with that and how out of left field it felt. It seemed as though the author suddenly realized, in the last twenty pages, that the story had only be this length - so everything was crammed in to make it fit.

All in all, it was a disappointing end for what started off as a fun, exciting read that was a breath of fresh air.