Kyra: The First Book of Enchantus [Tapa blanda]

Kyra is a teenage girl who dreams of another world, a fantastic world of great beauty where she feels completely at home. Then one day she is transported there and discovers that she is the Chosen One, a person prophesied from history, and must fight to overcome a great evil that has already destroyed large parts of the world.

This fits the archetypal pattern of finding one's true self and journeying to overcome the evil that threatens. It's always a good story. In this case, I have some positive feedback and some negative, so I'll start with the negative and get it out of the way.

I really didn't like the bird that does the transporting. Well, we don't always like all the characters in a novel so that's not a big problem, but then I got most annoyed with Kyra for enjoying "the largest cooked bird she'd ever seen" while sitting at the same table as the seagull-turned-pigeon called Marie. She has the grace to feel awkward about it, but for such seemingly beautiful people in this kingdom they're all incredibly insensitive.

My other gripe is the too-many typos. More rigorous editing would have caught these, and more rigorous editing would also have approached the discrepancy between the writing style and the age group for which I feel this book most suited. I would market this book to the 10 to 14 age group - the budding romance is very innocent, and the characters are black-and-white - but the sentences are frequently too long and the descriptions too wordy to be appropriate for that group of readers.

What I liked is the developing relationship between Kyra and the Guide, and I like the intrigue about Kyra's family being present somehow in both worlds. The descriptions of Jolus the Malignant and his creations are vivid - the author does gory and repulsive very well (I enjoyed some of this in his book of short stories - Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers). I like the magic powers Kyra learns to use, and the other magical apparatus that we see from time to time. I also like the ending, where there is more to be uncovered.

Review: KYRA: The First Book Of Enchantus
I have received and read this book in return for an honest review of the book.
The book starts off with a "Foreword" a dragged out recount of how the book came to come in the hands of many readers today. The "Foreword" should be cut down or saved for the end of the book as an "Authors Note". I feel the "Foreword would be more fitting as a "Authors Note", for many recount there trials, tribulations with in that point, for then after getting to get a understanding for the authors work, we can understand how piece of work if we may or may not like has come to be and what they may have felt what journey was took. A dedication, a mention of names in the beginning of those who helped along the way, almost like a footnote would work of you want to dedicate a body of work, or mention someone or a few people .

On to the book itself, the story starts off itself with a map of Enchantus, the map is created to give the reader a visual, an idea of how Enchatus is separated and where the land and border lies. The second smaller map is a slightly cruder to the first; the image is slightly at an angle. The lines overlap and are not cleanly placed over the image. When having a design in a book that relates to a previous you want to create connections, the second portion of the map should be the same as the first and a connection should be lead from the first image to next so it's the second portion of the map is a lead over from the first.
The story Kyra: The First Book of Enchantus a young girl Kyra has dreams of a land, a "imaginary" world that has their own language called Enchantus, with their own language called Aiso. Enchantus is a kingdom located in the world of Aisis Lip. We can see the location of Asis Lip and the kingdom location on the map in the beginning of the story. The word of Asis Lip, the world is vibrant and Kyra's dreams started off as once a week and she did not want to leave this beautiful place. The more she went in, the more people she got to know, they all had the same/ similar tan toned complexion, with fruit trees with fruits size of oranges but as green as watermelons and the meat within a soft blue color. In the beginning of the story we know not of much of the Kingdom of Enchantus and the world of Aisis Lip, we know not much of Kyra and her strange dreams that she has of this world only that she remembers clearly the day they started is when she turned 15 so we are also unsure the true age of Kyra, if she is speaking past tense or she telling the story as it is happening. The story line is not fully developed, neither are the characters.
At a point the her dreams become more than a dream and she is asked to go to Asis Lip, because for "years" since she was 15, she did not belong in the real world and she needed to save the kingdom and Queen Anita of Enchantus from Jolus the a' Malignant. I feel there is a lot going on in this story, some would call it "cliché" that a young girl dreams about going to another world and turns out to be true, but name something that has not already been done, can you do that. No I don't think so, for me it's what you can do with it, and this tale this story underdeveloped, the characters do not have substance. We do not know when in the time of this young girl's life this is supposed to be happening and who has always told her she is different and belongs in another world? We know little to nothing about her family in 225 pages, and nothing about the people she meets or barely anything about the land she discovers and visits once a week for a year until she finally her dreams become real and she is asked to save this realm Asis slip. I feel this book would have more potential with further development of the characters and the story.

Disclaimer: I was given a copy of this book for my honest review.

This book is riddled with things that made it not only difficult to read, but incredibly frustrating. First there are typos, weird paragraph breaks, repetitive lines, unrealistic speech from both Kyra and Jason, unnatural speech from just about everyone else, unnecessary sentences that don't add anything to the story, 'Jolus the Malignant' used multiple times in one sentence, a teenager (16 year old) riding around on her dog (I find this unrealistic and kinda creepy), and to top it all off, I simply didn't find the storytelling engaging. Luckily, mostly of these things are easily fixed.

Then there were the inaccuracies - one being Kyra says it has been 364 days since she started dreaming of Enchantus, however it has been MORE than one year so therefore it should be 366 days. The most annoying inaccuracy I found was the fact that the author says the ocean was blue because it was reflecting the sky. NO! The sky is blue because it reflects the ocean!

Other little things throughout the book also annoyed me - such as: 'Good evening my revolting creature..." - this is not nearly as insulting as it can be or is meant to be.

So while the author is incredibly descriptive, this sometimes hampers the story telling as the details might not be necessary or informative, or generally detracts from the point. I do applaud the idea behind this story - not necessarily that original- but pretty good anyway. Unfortunately all the things I listed above were just too distracting and the story didn't draw me in. Combined, it made this book really hard for me to read :(.