What do you think?
Rate this book
The Ring of Experience
The orbs choose the worthy ... and they’ve chosen him.
Fifteen-year-old Taydis Fletcher can’t catch a break. His family is emotionally disconnected, his friends have turned on him, and his grandfather—his only positive role model—was killed in a supposed wild animal attack. Without his mentor, Taydis has lost his way.
Everything changes when magical orbs appear and gift him the very thing he needs most, something humanity lost long ago: empathy.
Before Taydis can make sense of his newfound ability, he’s whisked away to Arrendar Academy, an outdoor school once attended by his late grandfather. Chief among his studies? Learning how to survive in the wild, crafting magical armor, and ultimately, earning more orbs. For the first time in years, he feels like he belongs.
But beneath the academy’s charm, danger lurks. An instructor harbors many secrets. The warden has a target on his back. Rivalries could turn deadly. And when Taydis discovers his grandfather may have actually fallen victim to foul play, he’ll stop at nothing to uncover the truth.
This character-driven academy adventure is a mix of mystery, wonder, and self-discovery—set in a world where magic must be earned, and empathy just might change everything.
Fifteen-year-old Taydis Fletcher can’t catch a break. His family is emotionally disconnected, his friends have turned on him, and his grandfather—his only positive role model—was killed in a supposed wild animal attack. Without his mentor, Taydis has lost his way.
Everything changes when magical orbs appear and gift him the very thing he needs most, something humanity lost long ago: empathy.
Before Taydis can make sense of his newfound ability, he’s whisked away to Arrendar Academy, an outdoor school once attended by his late grandfather. Chief among his studies? Learning how to survive in the wild, crafting magical armor, and ultimately, earning more orbs. For the first time in years, he feels like he belongs.
But beneath the academy’s charm, danger lurks. An instructor harbors many secrets. The warden has a target on his back. Rivalries could turn deadly. And when Taydis discovers his grandfather may have actually fallen victim to foul play, he’ll stop at nothing to uncover the truth.
This character-driven academy adventure is a mix of mystery, wonder, and self-discovery—set in a world where magic must be earned, and empathy just might change everything.
460 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 20, 2025
3 people want to read
About the author
Ryan A. Daniele
1 book1 followerA piano teacher by trade, Ryan fills his house with music by day and stories by night. When he’s not hooking gutter balls at the lanes, you’ll find him cruising around on his inline skates, composing songs on his baby grand, or tweaking rules to classic board games—because why not? Ryan is a Barq’s root beer enthusiast who lives in California with his wife and son.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 27, 2025
I received a free ARC from BookSiren and am leaving this review voluntarily.
This book had a lot going for it. The unique magic system with the orbs, the large cast of interesting characters, a somewhat morally gray MC with a wonderful group of friends, enough action to balance out the school academy setting.
While the fantastical element with the magical orbs took awhile to figure out, I do think it's unique and I'm curious to find out more about how exactly it works, how the "collection" and absorption into armor works, the different colors, etc. There is still so much to explore within the magic.
Now, on to my main focus on the characters because I have some thoughts.
1. Taydis - I'm sorry, but he annoyed me more often than not. I understand he's still a kid, but even still there were *so* many things he did that were either wrong or just straight up unkind. And yet he seemed to get away with the mast majority of it. I hated that. His friends, while great and they really did try, just stuck with him regardless of his actions. Now, Taydis is definitely worse at the beginning of the story, but he is by no means a "good" kid by the end. Just when I would start to like Taydis, he did something else stupid. I'm really hoping he'll either change more in the future series or he'll finally see the consequence of his actions.
2. Revlan and Lainie - Both were a wonderful complement to Taydis, and definitely much better people in my opinion, but that aside… I loved the trio's dynamic with each other so much. They didn't always get along, but they always had each other's backs, and they had their own strengths and weakness. I would 100% love to read stories from their POVs.
3. Daevin - I'd like to see more of Daevin in future stories… although I feel like the rivalry just kinda disappeared later in the story. Not to mention, the entire rivalry started because of Taydis, so I feel like it's very well-deserved, which I think is one of the reasons I want to see more from it and if/how it resolves. Sure, Daevin is a jerk, but honestly not any more than Taydis.
4. Jace/Neal/Chester - I have no words. Actually I do. I am absolutely livid. I 100% considered knocking the rating down to 3 stars after that ending.
5. Valis - For him to have been introduced so early into the story, I honestly thought he would have a bigger role. I don't know how I feel about him yet because I don't feel like I really know a lot about him (Although I do love Faylix), but I definitely hope we get a lot more of him later.
There are a few others I could specifically mention, but then I'd be here all day, so as far as the other characters, I did enjoy most of them. It was weird with them all being different ages, and there's still several outside of the main class that I'm not really sure about their magic, but I'm sure it's things we'll figure out as the story progresses.
Setting wise, I feel like Arrendar Academy was very well described, and we got to see a lot of the campus, dorms, and activities which I found fun. I always like to be able to explore the fantasy school settings. Although the map of Artica at the beginning doesn't make it look very large, it's obvious there's still a lot of the country to be seen, so I was surprised that we stayed in Arrendar for the majority of the story.
Now on to some of the reasons why I couldn't rate it 5 stars.
I was a little confused going into the story. I was under the assumption that empathy didn't really exist, but people seemed liked every day people, so Taydis just had an enhanced level of empathy which obviously still worked, but it's hard to see how that's going to make a difference or "save the day" or anything in the future, especially since it wasn't really talked about that much within the story, and we don't even start practicing it until the end. I mean obviously the author has a plan, and I'm excited to see what it is, but it definitely wasn't what I expected going into the story.
Also on a side note… Why were the animals all combinations of real animals? It made it somewhat easy to picture some of them, I guess, but I don't know, something about it just bugged me.
The last thing that bothered me with this story wasn't the story itself, but it was the length of the story. In reality, the plot was very well done. If anything, I would have loved to go more in depth in some parts, like with Jace, Taydis's time in Trent and his journey to Arrendar, or with Starla and Master Tallindor's classes. However, for the first book in a YA series, it was definitely on the longer side and made it near impossible to just sit down and keep reading, despite how much I would loved to. Not to mention, the progress made for the classes seemed to be very inconsistent.
Overall, I enjoyed this one and am very much looking forward to the next book in the series. I would definitely recommend for those who like immersive fantasy with a rather unique magic system and don't mind quite a bit of adventure, mystery that's still unresolved at the end on book one, and an MC that definitely still has a long way to go.
This book had a lot going for it. The unique magic system with the orbs, the large cast of interesting characters, a somewhat morally gray MC with a wonderful group of friends, enough action to balance out the school academy setting.
While the fantastical element with the magical orbs took awhile to figure out, I do think it's unique and I'm curious to find out more about how exactly it works, how the "collection" and absorption into armor works, the different colors, etc. There is still so much to explore within the magic.
Now, on to my main focus on the characters because I have some thoughts.
1. Taydis - I'm sorry, but he annoyed me more often than not. I understand he's still a kid, but even still there were *so* many things he did that were either wrong or just straight up unkind. And yet he seemed to get away with the mast majority of it. I hated that. His friends, while great and they really did try, just stuck with him regardless of his actions. Now, Taydis is definitely worse at the beginning of the story, but he is by no means a "good" kid by the end. Just when I would start to like Taydis, he did something else stupid. I'm really hoping he'll either change more in the future series or he'll finally see the consequence of his actions.
2. Revlan and Lainie - Both were a wonderful complement to Taydis, and definitely much better people in my opinion, but that aside… I loved the trio's dynamic with each other so much. They didn't always get along, but they always had each other's backs, and they had their own strengths and weakness. I would 100% love to read stories from their POVs.
3. Daevin - I'd like to see more of Daevin in future stories… although I feel like the rivalry just kinda disappeared later in the story. Not to mention, the entire rivalry started because of Taydis, so I feel like it's very well-deserved, which I think is one of the reasons I want to see more from it and if/how it resolves. Sure, Daevin is a jerk, but honestly not any more than Taydis.
4. Jace/Neal/Chester - I have no words. Actually I do. I am absolutely livid. I 100% considered knocking the rating down to 3 stars after that ending.
5. Valis - For him to have been introduced so early into the story, I honestly thought he would have a bigger role. I don't know how I feel about him yet because I don't feel like I really know a lot about him (Although I do love Faylix), but I definitely hope we get a lot more of him later.
There are a few others I could specifically mention, but then I'd be here all day, so as far as the other characters, I did enjoy most of them. It was weird with them all being different ages, and there's still several outside of the main class that I'm not really sure about their magic, but I'm sure it's things we'll figure out as the story progresses.
Setting wise, I feel like Arrendar Academy was very well described, and we got to see a lot of the campus, dorms, and activities which I found fun. I always like to be able to explore the fantasy school settings. Although the map of Artica at the beginning doesn't make it look very large, it's obvious there's still a lot of the country to be seen, so I was surprised that we stayed in Arrendar for the majority of the story.
Now on to some of the reasons why I couldn't rate it 5 stars.
I was a little confused going into the story. I was under the assumption that empathy didn't really exist, but people seemed liked every day people, so Taydis just had an enhanced level of empathy which obviously still worked, but it's hard to see how that's going to make a difference or "save the day" or anything in the future, especially since it wasn't really talked about that much within the story, and we don't even start practicing it until the end. I mean obviously the author has a plan, and I'm excited to see what it is, but it definitely wasn't what I expected going into the story.
Also on a side note… Why were the animals all combinations of real animals? It made it somewhat easy to picture some of them, I guess, but I don't know, something about it just bugged me.
The last thing that bothered me with this story wasn't the story itself, but it was the length of the story. In reality, the plot was very well done. If anything, I would have loved to go more in depth in some parts, like with Jace, Taydis's time in Trent and his journey to Arrendar, or with Starla and Master Tallindor's classes. However, for the first book in a YA series, it was definitely on the longer side and made it near impossible to just sit down and keep reading, despite how much I would loved to. Not to mention, the progress made for the classes seemed to be very inconsistent.
Overall, I enjoyed this one and am very much looking forward to the next book in the series. I would definitely recommend for those who like immersive fantasy with a rather unique magic system and don't mind quite a bit of adventure, mystery that's still unresolved at the end on book one, and an MC that definitely still has a long way to go.
April 26, 2025
I was torn between 3 and 4 stars but settled on a 3 because to me a 4 means the book was outstanding and this one just wasn’t. That is not to say it was bad. I think it could have been a 4 star book if the author had just made it clearer where the book was going. I kept wondering how much longer it would continue because I didn’t really get what the ending would be. That might sound odd but it really resonated for me.
The book was a magic school story with all of the right elements. It had students who were quite real, although quite odd. in fact some of them annoyed me so much I wanted to shake them. It (eventually) had a villain that was an actual character and fit into one of the many plot lines. In retrospect, I think that was the problem. The book seems set out to be a series where each book takes place over a school year (sound familiar?) and instead of spacing plot lines out over a few books the author sort of threw them out there all through the book so that you had no idea which path it was going to take; but not in a good way. It ended up making me weary of the book because things happened with each of the paths and I couldn’t tell if it was leading the plot of this book or just a throwaway from a plot you might not hear about for awhile. And heaven forbid they aren’t throwaways, because I will never remember them when I get to the 4th or 6th book. (Clue: Unless they get progressively worse, I am interested enough to read the whole series.)
One last thing on the characters: the main character is the bad one in the beginning and quite quickly becomes good (but still horribly annoying) and the opposite is true of the “bully” who s nice in the beginning and a bit over the top evil in that same span of pages. It turns out not to be that whiplash inducing because I wanted to smack all of them upside the head most of the time.
I received a free eARC of this book in return for a free and unbiased review.
The book was a magic school story with all of the right elements. It had students who were quite real, although quite odd. in fact some of them annoyed me so much I wanted to shake them. It (eventually) had a villain that was an actual character and fit into one of the many plot lines. In retrospect, I think that was the problem. The book seems set out to be a series where each book takes place over a school year (sound familiar?) and instead of spacing plot lines out over a few books the author sort of threw them out there all through the book so that you had no idea which path it was going to take; but not in a good way. It ended up making me weary of the book because things happened with each of the paths and I couldn’t tell if it was leading the plot of this book or just a throwaway from a plot you might not hear about for awhile. And heaven forbid they aren’t throwaways, because I will never remember them when I get to the 4th or 6th book. (Clue: Unless they get progressively worse, I am interested enough to read the whole series.)
One last thing on the characters: the main character is the bad one in the beginning and quite quickly becomes good (but still horribly annoying) and the opposite is true of the “bully” who s nice in the beginning and a bit over the top evil in that same span of pages. It turns out not to be that whiplash inducing because I wanted to smack all of them upside the head most of the time.
I received a free eARC of this book in return for a free and unbiased review.
May 28, 2025
I recently had the pleasure of reading The Ring of Experience, the enchanting debut novel from talented new author Ryan A. Daniele, and I was truly captivated! From the very first page, I was drawn into a vibrant world filled with magic and adventure. Taydis, our protagonist, initially comes off as impulsive and somewhat unlikable, but it’s his complex nature that makes his journey so compelling. Watching him transform as he grapples with his flaws is both relatable and inspiring.
The author’s storytelling is remarkable, presenting breathtaking landscapes and rich lore that kept me hooked. The well-crafted supporting characters added depth to the narrative. What stands out most is how the book explores meaningful themes of empathy and friendship within its fantastical framework. For a first novel, this is an impressive achievement, and I eagerly anticipate what this author will create next.
If you’re looking for a spellbinding read that immerses you in a beautifully crafted world, The Ring of Experience is a must-read! You will not be disappointed, and it’s worth noting that despite the target audience being from 10 to 18, this book truly can be enjoyed by all ages.
Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The author’s storytelling is remarkable, presenting breathtaking landscapes and rich lore that kept me hooked. The well-crafted supporting characters added depth to the narrative. What stands out most is how the book explores meaningful themes of empathy and friendship within its fantastical framework. For a first novel, this is an impressive achievement, and I eagerly anticipate what this author will create next.
If you’re looking for a spellbinding read that immerses you in a beautifully crafted world, The Ring of Experience is a must-read! You will not be disappointed, and it’s worth noting that despite the target audience being from 10 to 18, this book truly can be enjoyed by all ages.
Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
May 27, 2025
At the beginning of the book, some of the writing and the way characters spoke seemed stiff and some of the vocabulary used was unfamiliar. I thought the idea of the story was good, but it didn’t really hold my attention. I realize I am not the age of the intended audience.
I read this book aloud with my 10 year old son. He loved it. He liked some of the characters, and really disliked, maybe even hated, others. There was some vocabulary he didn’t know, but overall was able to keep up and understand what was happening. Very often he couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. So for the intended age range, I would say this book is great. My son is ready for the next book!
While reading, some of the animal combinations were difficult to figure out. Having an animal glossary at the end that explained what each animal was would be helpful.
Overall this book was exciting, made my son think, and was really enjoyable.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I read this book aloud with my 10 year old son. He loved it. He liked some of the characters, and really disliked, maybe even hated, others. There was some vocabulary he didn’t know, but overall was able to keep up and understand what was happening. Very often he couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. So for the intended age range, I would say this book is great. My son is ready for the next book!
While reading, some of the animal combinations were difficult to figure out. Having an animal glossary at the end that explained what each animal was would be helpful.
Overall this book was exciting, made my son think, and was really enjoyable.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
April 28, 2025
I really liked The Ring of Experience. After a few chapters, I couldn't put it down. There are hidden layers and stories within stories that make me want to read more and find out what's going on. I loved the magic and the world-building. I'm excited for book 2!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews