I really liked this story. It has so much potential and was done very well. I really enjoyed the characters, but thought the initial setup where all of his crew mates except maybe one were murdered at the very beginning of the story was a bit heavy handed and lacked any real value to the story. Maybe in later books, this will be fleshed out and it will be more relevant to the ongoing story. Another thing that bothered me a bit is that the story didn’t advance very far in terms of what I expected. The story was pretty long, so I understand ending it where the author did, but I found it unfulfilling. After all, the series is called “The Dragon Mage,” so I kind of expected him to be a mage. Hopefully we see this in future books.
I know, I know, I said, “I really liked this story,” and it sounds like I’ve got mostly complaints. The things I liked are the concept of the story, the writing, characters, and potential. I do recommend this book, and I REALLY hope I can give book 2 4-stars or 5-stars for the story, but I’ve got a giant backlog of books to catch up on, so it will have to wait until I’m caught up or the book goes on sale. The narrating was solid and well done.