Haven Lost

The Dragon's Brood Cycle, Book 1

By: Josh de Lioncourt

Narrated by: Reay Kaplan

Legends never die; they just go into hiding....

Sixteen-year-old Emily Haven, heroine of the girls' hockey team at Lindsey High, has spent her young life keeping two secrets: her rapidly deteriorating home life and the seemingly supernatural power that makes her a star on the ice. When she begins seeing visions of a lost and ragged boy reflected in mirrors and shop windows, a series of events unfolds that tears her from 21st-century Minneapolis and leaves her stranded in another world with horrors to rival those she has left behind. Lost amidst creatures of fantasy and legend, she's forced to confront the demons of both her past and future to unravel the riddle of the mysterious boy and embark upon a journey to uncover long forgotten histories and the dark, cloaked figure in the shadows behind them all. Caught between opposing forces of a war she doesn't understand, Emily must find new strength within herself and, above all, the will to remember her friends.

©2014 Josh de Lioncourt (P)2015 Draconis Entertainment

great new author

I really enjoyed this book. It was very gritty and a good read. I wasn't expecting how it all played out. Can't wait for the next one!

Hockey made awesome!

It’s definitely epic! We start off in the real world where highschooler Emily is playing a serious hockey game somewhere in Minneapolis. The team loses and Emily feels she let the team down. Her coach and her best friend (Kayce) each try to cheer her up. But she heads home in a funk. And then her day gets worse! Emily’s home life isn’t ideal at all and that sends her running out into the night and then she wakes up in a completely different world in the hold of a ship surrounded by 7 other young ladies.
At this point, the story really started to grab me. Emily has to keep her wits about her as she learns everything she can about this world. At the Seven Skies, the ladies must prove their worth to the Sorceress. She takes on only a few trainees each year. Emily quickly made friends with shy Seline. In exchange for general info about this world, Emily teaches Seline how to read. I thought that was cute, but I was a little surprised at how quickly Seline learned to read.
But then brutal reality rears it’s ugly head. The Sorceress’s brand of justice doesn’t sit well with Emily and she vows to save a small boy from such an ugly fate. So Emily and Seline rescue young Michael and unexpectedly meet up with Corbmac, who also felt the same way. Together, they all flee in the night! High adventure ensues!

The story does have some slow moments, and a few others that I felt could have some drama added. Over all, it’s a fun adventure story without too much depth. Emily does have some character growth. The rest of the characters are rather static.

I really enjoyed Emily’s reactions to the variety of beings in this fantasy world. Like that kitspur named Rascal (imagine a cat crossed with a bat) freaks her out at first. Then there’s the lizard people as well, but Garret eventually becomes a friend. Toss in some salt mines, mysterious crystals, and a few undead walking around, you have plenty of odd stuff for Emily to adjust to.

Michael keeps calling Emily ‘Derek’ and that is at first just ignored. Later on the mystery is revealed, and that leads to a bigger revelation! I was surprised. I didn’t see that coming. So, in the end it was fun and I look forward to Book 2. 4/5 stars.

The Narration: Reay Kaplan has a great voice for Emily. She sounds like a 16-year-old young lady. Kaplan had distinct voices for all the characters. Her male voices were believable. I liked all her regional accents for the various characters. Her old man voice is pretty good and her gruff and sometimes grumpy voice for Cormac was very believable. The pacing was good and there were no technical issues with the recording. 5/5 stars.

I received this audiobook from the author. All opinions are 100% my own.

Great book: YA feel without the age restrictions

I really enjoyed this book. It set up a lot of plot points and details that will, I hope, come back in future books, but didn't leave so much hanging that I felt frustrated. The narration was quite good, too.

What really struck me was the book's use of strong language, and I don't mean that as a negative. This story felt like young adult fiction: it had a teenage main character go through something traumatic, only to wind up in a fantasy world where magic is real and where friends and enemies await. Yet, unlike most YA books, the author isn't afraid to let characters swear. This made dialog feel more natural to me. Too many other books are aimed at a young audience, so censor themselves until the language constraints make parts of the story sound so fake, or out of character for how someone in the book should react, that I am taken out of the story. That's no problem in Haven Lost, and it was refreshing to find.

I highly recommend this book if you enjoy magic/fantasy stories. It was a very enjoyable read, and I am eagerly awaiting the release of the next installment.

Haven Lost

Would you feel sadness if you entered into another world and didn’t know if you would ever return to this one? For those who have parents, children, and friends, you would imagine that this would seem like a very difficult concept to broach. But if you didn’t have anyone…would you think about it any differently? De Lioncourt takes one seemingly ordinary sixteen year-old girl and thrusts her into an extraordinary world, much like Alice in Wonderland, only without the rabbit and the doped up Caterpillar of course. Readers will get hooked by the adventure and trials that Emily and her new friends face for their survival.

Emily Haven is a hockey player, but she has this gift. She has a sensation of knowing what is going to happen, like an enormously powerful gut feeling…you could say. Leaving her world to come to this new one filled with unrecognizable creatures and danger around every corner, she has lost everything and now she doesn’t know what this new world will bring. With visions of a boy looking back at her through mirrors, she starts to piece the puzzles together that something is very wrong in this new world and she may have been sent to find and save him. At first, Emily knows nothing about where she is and she is immediately placed as an apprentice in Marianne’s castle, but soon transitions into a knight’s role. It becomes very apparent that she has entered into a war between Marianne’s knights and the Dragon’s Brood. Forced to pick sides, Emily goes with her gut and sticks to her original plan of finding the boy; everything has to work itself out after the rescue mission, right? Little does she know that her life may hang in the balance, and the danger that she has brought to her new friends may ultimately be death.

De Lioncourt has a spellbinding fantasy, filled with creativity, adventure, and darkness looming in every corner of the world. In the beginning, the pace feels rushed, but then evens out to a steady and enjoyable pace. The characters are mysteries, filled with curiosity, determination, and the shear will of living to see another day. The author ensures to create flawed characters that must face their own demons and the ones that are after them in this new world. Emily and her new friends have a long journey ahead and each character will learn more about themselves as they go. Since this review is complimenting the audiobook, the narrator enlivens the story with her vocal and emotional differentiation. Every character is unmistakably different in tone and sound. There are a few words here and there that appear to be mispronounced; however, this should not hinder enjoyment of the novel. If you are a reader of dark fantasy, you may be interested in picking this book up. This is the first installment in The Dragon’s Brood Cycle Series; therefore, readers are able to plunge right into the story.

NOTE: This story is tagged as a coming of age fantasy; however, due to the graphic detail of the violence that is produced in this story, it would be recommended for an audience over the age of 18.

A copy of this audiobook was provided to Turning Another Page by Audiobookworm Promotions and in no way affects the honesty of this review. We provide a four-star rating to Haven Lost by Josh de Lioncourt.

A+ All the Way!

Haven Lost is a joy to listen to. Josh de Lioncourt's characters win your heart as Emily and her companions share an amazing adventure filled with mystery, bravery and unexpected discoveries. The author does an exceptional job describing the remarkable world that is the setting for this story. You easily are transported from the place you know into a whole new experience as you travel with Emily on her search for answers that seem unreachable. Reay Kaplan does a superb job bringing the characters to life. Her outstanding ability to capture the personality of each one adds to the story and overall enjoyment of this audio version. I highly recommend all the wonderful suspense, laughter and edge of your seat adventure contained in Haven Lost! Enjoy.

Very unique and will draw you in like magic

“Haven Lost” was an interesting and pretty focus-intensive listen. And the fact that it was a mashup of genres—fantasy, myth, time-travel (sort of?), and action/adventure—made it far more engaging than I anticipated. I’m unfamiliar with this author, but am quite glad I took the plunge!

Mr. de Lioncourt spun us a beautiful story here, with vivid detail and a startling depth. His scenes and characters were beautifully rendered, life-like in spite of their foreignness, and it was easy to get to know them. He has a gift for world-building, and though at times he withheld information a little too long, the reveals he gave us were well worth the wait in most cases. I’m very much looking forward to seeing where he’ll take us next in this very unique, yet somehow familiar feeling, series.

My heart broke for Emily more than once throughout her journey. This girl, despite her intriguing gift, lived a rough life: drug addict mother, POS stepdad, dead father she doesn’t even have a picture of because mom burned them all. Having to keep her magic (that she doesn’t recognize as such quite yet) a secret is just another burden. But readers don’t get much of a chance to settle into Emily’s life before she’s whisked away to another world that’s even more stressful. Emily handles it really, really well, all things considered, and seems to just take the weirdness and danger in stride. Some of her actions and a few of her motives didn’t make a ton of sense until the end, which was a little frustrating, but the journey was so intriguing that I was willing to put up with the not-knowing. The friends and enemies she makes along the way fill out the character cast quite nicely, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the relationships grow. I also have a suspicion that perhaps a little romance will come along for Emily and Cormack.

I’m SO glad I was introduced to the Dragon’s Brood Cycle in audio format before I discovered it in print! Reay Kaplan is a delightful narrator and she truly brought the characters to life, especially Emily and Selene. Her portrayal of the male characters was excellent and she handled the many conversations between male and female characters without missing a beat or overdramatizing for the sake helping the reader tell them apart. The audio quality was clean and professional, with no awkward pauses, background noise, or other distracting sounds.

Bottom line: If you want a little more fantasy and strangeness with your King Arthur legend, this is the series for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough—but be warned; this book will require your complete focus, so don’t try to listen while doing other things. You’ll find yourself having to back up and re-read if you try it.

**I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Josh de Lioncourt. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.**