Rise of The Dragon’s Heir: An Epic Fantasy of Power, Identity, and Becoming

The Zhandarian Chronicles #1

by Darlene Franklin-Campbell

338 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 8, 2026

About the author

Darlene Franklin-Campbell is a Kentucky-based author, artist, and educator whose work spans genres and disciplines, shaped by a longstanding engagement with mythology, religion, philosophy, and human psychology. Holding a Master’s degree and recognized as a national award-winning poet, she brings both academic depth and creative intuition to her writing.

Her fiction explores the intersections of memory, identity, and belief, often set within worlds where the boundaries between the human and the unknown are not easily defined. Over more than two decades, she has developed narratives grounded in history, culture, and the inner lives of her characters.

She is the author of multiple works, including I Listened, Momma, Touched, Looking for Pork Chop McQuade, What Have You Done Now, Rosie Putt?, and When I Was a Kid in Kentucky. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary publications, and she is the recipient of the Mary Ballard Chapbook Award. She is a member of the Elizabeth Maddox Roberts Poetry Society, the Bluegrass Writers Coalition, and the Adair County Arts Council.

In addition to writing, she is a visual artist whose work includes original character studies, maps, and fine art pieces that extend the worlds she creates. Her artwork has been featured in exhibitions focused on Kentucky’s cultural heritage. As an experienced public speaker, she engages with readers through literary events, community gatherings, and conversations that explore storytelling, identity, and the creative process. She is also developing a podcast centered on lived stories and the ways people make meaning from them.

Her work remains guided by an ongoing interest in what shapes human experience and what endures when those structures begin to shift.

Reviews

[Mig Feuser · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book simply takes you into another world. You can't let go until you have finished.

[Vicky Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have actually read this book twice, it's that good. The world building and character development leads you into a new and foreign world. A world where everything is familiar, but not exactly the same as life on Earth. The characters struggles and adventures will leave you thinking long after you've finished the book.

[PK Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally read science fiction novels unless they're graphic novels, but I made an exception for this one. I see that it's labeled fantasy but the entire premises of the book rests upon an ancient earth civilization that got lost to time on a distant planet. I like that part because it reminds me of the kind of science fiction I read back in the days of Andre Norton, back in the days of the original Dune. This book has a little bit of a Star Gate feel to me on account of the way that Toan, The Dragon, is disembodied and must merge with a genetically matched host in order to continue. This story is pretty character-driven and really digs into questions about what really makes one human. Another thing that sticks out to me is the way it looks at destiny. Does destiny happen to us or do we happen to it? I love these ethical questions. It seems like a lot of science fiction and fantasy these days is just trying to see how dark and dystopian it can get, but this book does something different. It asks if you can hold onto your humanity even when the whole world tries to tell you that you're something else. On the surface, it seems like just another story, but for those who can see beneath the surface, this author is addressing some deep issues and asking profound questions.

[Richard Pickax · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH MY GOSH!!! This book is unlike any fantasy novel I've ever read! It talks about a dragon but the dragon is really a parasitic creature that builds an entire culture and religious system off pieces of earth's history, requiring human sacrifices on top of a meso-American-style pyramid in the midst of an alien desert in a culture built around a fragment from the book of Revelation that arrived on a crashed shipped three thousand years in the past and pulls its images from the remnants of a human storybook that ended up in the hands of an emperor's daughter. If you want a book that puts unpredictable spins on fantasy tropes, that makes you think and look at what it truly means to be in power, to love, to forgive to claim others as your family, then this book is for you. While the reading is EASY the messages are DEEP. I read it in one day. I could not put it down.

[Ben Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. Starts with a leather bag of human heads, that will start your fire! Kamna doesn't want to be a ruler. He wants a family and calm home with animals. He doesn't dream of power or glory. The tragedy of this book is watching those small, honest desires be stripped from him one by one while something larger and more dangerous is forced onto him in their place. His resistance is not heroic posturing. It is grief and survival and love — and that makes him far more real than most fantasy protagonists.