Full disclosure: I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
This book leaves right were the previous book left off. Charlie and company are transported to Earth, but medieval Earth. Charlie then becomes king by killing the previous king, or rather his dragon killing him. Thanks to the help of his dragon, people are afraid of him and don’t challenge him.
I dislike that he proclaims himself the dragon king. That would imply he is a king of dragons or at the very least has dominion over at least one. He does not. He is partners with one and must request her help for any favors. The title just seems gratuitous.
The problem is that Charlie tries to be a king and makes changes. Some of the stresses of running a kingdom don’t make an appearance and his actions show small consequences, instead of far reaching consequences you would expect. Government is complex. He doesn’t bother to get to know his neighbors or build relationships with them. The majority of the problems are quickly addressed or the situation resolves in Charlie’s favor with little effort. No economic, trade, food, sanitation, or judiciary problems. A minor corruption situation was addressed.
Charlie jokes about making a wand with Bob, the Vampire Assassin. Bob then goes and nurtures a tree and uses a branch with a lock of hair from his love interest and makes said wand. With some magic to seal up the wand after the hair is inserted. Convenient to know a spell to heal a branch of a tree. Bob didn’t show healing skills for trees before. Must be a specific spell. Convenient as to use magic, a very exact phrase, with the correct pronunciation, must be uttered in order to use the magic; which has a very specific purpose. No one knows all of the magic words or most of them. Just a point of contention that the protagonists and his cast know the specifics spells when the situation arises. Also, the antagonist in this book uses magic to transverse from the universe where Charlie was previously in all the way to our Sol system. How she learned the spell when it requires very specific words and intonation is anyone’s guess. The spell was unknown, but somehow the antagonist was able to pick it up.
The romance between Charlie and his wife wasn’t really existent. Like it just happened and wasn’t a natural transition. Would have liked more build up with a natural transition.
In one situation in the book, they left the antagonist trapped under a pile of rubble. She would get out eventually. But Charlie says to run and that they don’t stand a chance. A short while later they face her and still prevail. No real reason why they couldn’t have just finished her while she was trapped under the rubble or prepared to fight her then. Just a massive plot hole here. She killed others in cold blood in front of Charlie, but still shouldn’t be killed? She’s too powerful? Yet you fight her a short while later and she’s not too powerful then?
By the end of the book, the book setups up for the next scenario, which is in a technological city. I’m looking forward to that as this book was the worse one so far.
The narrator did a decent job. Still would like more variety to the voices.