Book review - The Legends of the First Empire

Riyria Revelations is one of the best fantasy series I've read. It started (relatively) slowly and by middle of the series, I was totally immersed and couldn't stop reading. I hope there are sequels planned ;)

I then kept books set in Elan aside to read other books before starting Riyria Chronicles. While I liked them, I felt these weren't as good as Revelations. So, when Legends series came up, I had planned to wait for entire series to finish - for binge reading, as well as allowing more time to pass.

 

Picture credit: goodreads

 

This past week, I finally gave up and started the series (without knowing that the three books released so far can be read as a trilogy, something like two arcs of Stormlight Archive I guess). It was a pleasant surprise that it was so fast paced, right from the start. I ended up finishing the books in about 6 days. I would place this series among top classical fantasy series like LoTR, WoT and MST. Apart from the racing plot, the highlight of the series were its characters - POV as well as side characters.

 

I would highly recommend the series (can be started without reading the Riyria books) - keep tissue papers handy.

 

 

Mini reviews for last four self published books I read

All four are available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

Underlord ★★★★★

This book was so good, on par with Blackflame (3rd in the Cradle series) and Ghostwater (5th)

I had binged the first five late last year and had no issues following without a reread (there were hints to refresh our memory). The main characters each have a unique voice by now and it was so good to get into that space quickly. Nice to see so many laugh-out-loud moments, topped by the bloopers section. Awesome action scenes is a given in this series. Prologue and Epilogue were great as well, which showed events around the world and beyond.

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Balam, Spring ★★★★

This has been pending for a long time on TBR, finally picked it up.

Good change of pace from usual action packed fantasy. The entire story takes place in a small town where practically everybody knows everybody else.

I felt the author could've done a better job with one of the main characters, but could as well be considered as part of the charm. Things just are. The mystery aspect was handled well. It felt a bit dark at times but I thought it was justified after knowing the reveal at the end.

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Minimum Wage Magic ★★★★

Nice start to follow up Heartstrikers series, which is one of the best series I read last year.

This was again easy to read, fast paced with nice action scenes. I do hope we get cameos from our dear MCs from earlier series, but things are interesting enough without them as well. Sometimes, less is more ;)

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The Dragon Seller ★★★★

This is the kind of book that made me love self published books. This one has vegetarian dragons who have a bond-like relationship to trees and are loyal like pets, so cool. It is a fast paced, easy to read Urban fantasy with likeable characters. Some questions remained unanswered, which is fine by me, but I hope there are more books in this setting.

I found this one on weatherwaxreport - thanks a lot Esme :)

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Book images courtesy goodreads