Monday, April 19, 2010

Review; Starlighter

Dragons are enslaving humankind and a black egg signals the end of the world. Jason Masters must journey to another realm and join forces with a slave girl named Koren to rescue the captives and save two worlds from destruction. What if the Legends Are True? Jason Masters doubted the myths: people taken through a portal to another realm and enslaved by dragons. But when his brother is taken, he must uncover the truth and find the portal before it's too late. Once he's through the portal, he meets Koren, a slave in the dragons' realm, who struggles to destroy a black egg prophesied to doom all mankind. Jason and Koren must work together to save their two worlds before the dragons learn that their secrets have been discovered. In Starlighter, bestselling author Bryan Davis masterfully weaves fantasy and inspiration into a captivating novel for young adults. (From the back cover)

I expected a great book from Bryan Davis. And he, more or less, delivered.

As I have seen other people say, the actual writing and dialogue are excellent, superb. It sucks you into the story and doensn't let you go. However, there were a few cons to this book;


  • The dragons are evil (except for one who seems to linger halfway), unlike the Dragons in Our Midst and Oracles of Fire series. It was a little disappointing, but Davis manages to pull it off.
  • Little character development. I wish the characters would have developed more. With an exception of Tibber the Fibber, I didn't really connect with them. I hope this is made up for in the next book.
  • ?Plot length? I don't know, but it seemed that this book went by too fast. I wish there were a little bit more plot to the story... I can't really find something against it, but it seemed like there was something missing.
  • The descriptions were a little lacking. This part will be fine for those who are slower readers, but for myself, I prefer a lot of description.

Other than these, the book was very well written and thought out. I especially liked the concept of the Starlighter. Very imaginative.

Magnar was satisfyingly evil, as was the black egg, if not more so.

There are some Christianity roots in here that I also hope will expand more in the next book, especially about the rescuing of the Lost Ones.

All in all, I rate Starlighter as 8.5 out of 10. Not Bryan Davis's best, but not his worst. Compared to other books, though, it is excellent. I'll be eagerly looking out for his next book in the Dragons of Starlight series.


***Update***

I was looking over this post, and it seemed like I didn't quite expand enough on the good stuff. :P That's human nature, after all; we're pessimistic. :D

But I really enjoyed this book, although it did seem a little incomplete, since it's the first book in a series. I still rate it 8.5 out of 10 (which is a good rating, if you think about it). :D


1 comment:

Nathan R. Petrie said...

I liked the twist of having the dragons be bad. Was neat I thought!

And that's funny, 'cause I found the characters very well defined LOL

But yeah, it was a beginning novel of a series. So the story doesn't feel like it ended well enough yet lol

I loved it :D