The Warrior Heir

The Warrior heir is a very interesting novel. It delves into a magical world of warriors and enchanters, wizards, and have a positive main character to boot. While it is true that some may see this as a Harry Potter knockoff, I saw it as something that was very unique if not very interesting.

Our main character is named Jack. This character is one that I find to be very interesting and very useful to the reader. In most stories like this where you have a main character that becomes a hero in some way, often the main character is a cliché. He's usually very weak both physically and/or mentally, and he cannot work to be any better than what he is without his powers or abilities that he gains later on in the novel. With this book, however, this is not the case. He is actually from the start of a good character for those who wish to emulate him. He's a person who has his own dreams and ambitions, and he's been in past relationships. One of my own personal pet peeves with major protagonists in these types of stories is when the main protagonist finds a love interest that is too pretty or is somehow out of his league. This pet peeve of mine really starts from the idea that it is a cliché and I think that lesser novels are guilty of this. However this is not the case with Jack. He's a character that has developed a relationship before the story has taken place, and we see that he has gone out with the prettiest girl in school, and he's rejected her because of her mean-spirited ways. This immediately abandons typical cliché we see in most novels, and sets us up for a very interesting character that perhaps should have been better handled. While I believe that this character is good from the outset, I simply think that the author does not have writing strong enough to make him a fully fledged character. While I like that he has good ambitions and he has good friends at heart, he lacks a certain development in terms of writing style that makes me want to get to know him more. This is in our fault of the character itself but rather a fault of the author and her writing skill and or style.

Throughout the course of the novel we see that there's some type of antagonists wanting to chase Jack because he remains to be the only warrior in this society and magical world that he lives in. While there are some intense moments with this especially in certain scenes where the reader fined him vulnerable because he does not have his sword to protect them, I found these main antagonist to be a little week. While I understood that they were evil, I didn't necessarily understand why. Yes I realize that they have to take him for the games and use him for their own purposes, but I never really felt like they were terribly evil. Rather, I felt as though they would just here and gone in terms of how evil they were. They simply never stuck with me like say Lord Voldimort did from the Harry Potter series.

The plot of this novel works out pretty well for an introductory book. I like how we spend time working with Jack as he transcends into this new world and we see him grow and change and yet still maintain some of the very good quality character traits that we found in the beginning of the novel. The supporting cast in this all works well in their respective roles. Nick, Jack's caretaker, literally represents the wise old man who helps the warrior on his journey. Jack's aunt Linda serves as a door to which he is opened up into this world. Ellen does serve as a love interest both early on and throughout the novel. I specifically like how Ellen herself is not a cliché. Yes she's interested in soccer but she's also smart and, from the main character's viewpoint, very pretty. I wish that she was a little bit more developed than she already was. I feel like I want to know her character more and I'm hoping to see more for in the later series.

And that is just the major downside with the author writing this series. While the ending is strong and gives hope for the future, I just don't think that her writing really sticks with me. Nothing about this book really sticks itself out from the others in the fantasy genre. True Jack is a positive role model from the outset, but I believe that's just avoiding a cliché as opposed to doing anything of major work organization. While it's true that this book has some good ideas, such as delving into history and genealogy, it never delves into them very much and the time seems to miss them all together. That's why give this book a 2.5 out of five. In almost hits the mark for being average but the fact that I couldn't envision any of these characters outside of the world they inhabited brings this down for me. If you see this at the library I encourage you to pick it up. You are probably going to get a lot more use out of it than I did. This book has some nice role models, and the action is done well, so it will probably entertain you for a while. As for me, I'll read the next in the series and will probably put up a review but as to recommending it to buy I just can't say yes.