Alliandre Rising

The Knights' Trials, Book 1

By: Daniel E. Myers

Narrated by: Art Brown, Courtney Chen, Lilith Burke

Alliandre must win the Grand Melee, a tournament where every warrior in the realm competes for the title of Grand Champion, earning a knighthood as well, so he can marry his true love. But a rival has entered the scene, intent on ending Alliandres dream, and maybe his life. In their climactic confrontation in the Grand Melee, Alliandre must overcome his opponent and his own fiery temper.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Daniel E. Myers (P)2023 Daniel E. Myers

Long Explanation

Before I get into my review proper, I feel the need to state that I met the author. He had a party room at a nerd Convention to promote his book so I ordered it. He signed it with a very nice blurb inside, and then hand delivered it to my house! Very cool! So just before the next Convention, I read it, so I could tell him to his face what I thought of it. His first question was asking how well I dealt with the typos. I gave him my honest response that it was not very well. He then went to the back and returned with a brand new copy, that had been re-edited, signed it again with a new dedication and gave it to me for free. Then he told me that there was an audiobook version. I told him that I was going to hold my review then, until I could fully absorb the book audibly. We then stayed up way to late talking and swapping stories while the rest of the Con had long gone to sleep. All of this ingratiated him to me. To the point that, as an aspiring author, I must be as blunt and honest as possible. I also pride myself on giving spoiler free reviews, but I have to admit that this was a bit of a struggle this time around.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The flow is good, the pros are better than average, and the characters are interesting. But that last one brings about an issue, in my opinion.

There are far too many characters and the story is told from too many viewpoints. As soon as you get into the groove with one character, it switches, and you need to start all over. I feel like it would have benefited from a more focused viewpoint. There are characters that are focused on for several pages that don't impact the current story at all. They have no character growth, and are connected to the main characters only via other characters. I have no doubt that their actions will play a role in the final outcome of the series, but without direct interaction, or only brief interaction, it doesn't help this book at all. And I'll be honest, I don't know what would fix that. If they are plot points in the larger scheme of the series, they must be touched on, I just don't know how else to tell it. Maybe a hard restructuring and making one chapter about all the lesser characters actions, explaining how they fit in, but then the overall flow would likely get clunky. I don't have an answer.

The second point I have is a little embarrassing. When I read fantasy books, I tend to gloss over names and ignore them. I know, how dare I? To make matters worse, there are two characters in this book with slightly similar names. One of them is male, the other is female. While reading, my brain was trying to make them into one character which, obviously is not the case. Imagine my extreme confusion when they meet, but don't, early on the first chapter. That's when I stopped, broke down each name to realize they were two different people, and then restarted my reading. Unfortunately, and this is the embarrassing part, I never bothered to check those against the name of the book so even after finishing it the first time, I thought the title was about the female character. Luckily, the audiobook helped out with all of this by using a male and female reader for the different perspectives. I just wish they had more realized plan of how to the different voices.

I think the last major point that I want to touch on is the end of the book. It resolves one story, but not completely. And I feel like it is a very minor arch as well. The ending of the main plot from the beginning is withheld from the reader. As someone that was enjoying the book, this was extremely frustrating. Usually a device like this is used later in a series. It can be a pretty big turn off to some readers. I even have a friend that refuses to read the second book because the end lacked that payoff, and he liked the book more than I did! Granted, this is only one piece of anecdotal evidence, but it's still shows my overall point: it was frustrating.

So where does this leave me in my opinion of the book? Right where I started. I liked it. I'm glad I read it. I am looking forward to reading the next one. Ultimately, I'm really looking forward to the conclusion of the mine story. I don't know that Alliandre is my favorite character in the book, but he's interesting enough that I want to know more. But above all, and I can't stress this enough, the one thing you need to take away from this review is...