The Kingdom of Malinas (YA Fantasy)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Fifteen-year-old Sorrel returns to her home to find it burned and most of her people taken as slaves by Corrinus, the new ruler of Malinas. She's devastated to find her mother is amongst them and swears to rescue her. But her older brother Leif sends her to seek an army, while he remains with the survivors, teaching them to fight. It hurts that everyone says she's too small and too weak to fight, because she wants so much to be like her dead father - a great warrior - but she does as she's told.

She travels across country with her seer friend and faces many dangers – from mysterious grey wraiths to the crazed follower of Corrinus. She set out to find an army but instead, she returns with a dragon.

This was one of the very first novels I ever wrote. I wrote this when I was 16/17 (which was many years ago now!) on a really old PC I called Phylis. I remember having to print it out on an old ribbon printer to submit it to publishers - this was back before esubs were the norm! It never got picked up and I ended up self publishing it. I hope you enjoy.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2021
Author: EmmyJL

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.8/ 5.0
Followers: 12
Views: 14,241

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

lemniscateRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
An interesting world that feels a little storybook (in the good way) with an adventure brewing in the beginning that promises to be good.
Style
The writing is pretty good. Easy to read and just descriptive enough. Standard 3rd POV with the focus shifting between a few characters (it is tagged multiple leads). It might hop around a bit too much across scenes since I got the impression from the summary that this would be largely paying attention to Sorrel.
Grammar
Nothing stood out to me here, so probably pretty clean and proofread.
Story
There are a lot of small scenes, so at times the story feels a little disjointed. Sometimes it feels like it's going by too fast and at other times too slow depending on if the scene is short or long and if there's a lot of detail and introspection or not. I think the story would benefit from a better balance of it all. That said, the story is turning out to be a definite adventure. There's a good sense of tension and conflict that kept me interested. The world is also really charming.
Character
There are a few POV characters, but the most time is spent with Sorrel and there's a good sense of her character because of it. However, the POV isn't really deep most of the time for other characters, so they're a little on the hazy side.
In sum, the multiple leads and short scenes at times makes the story feel a bit messy, but at the heart is a real adventure in a unique world.