Once again I find myself in a position to give a poor review. The story has a ton of potential, which is why I went ahead and gave it two stars, but in the end, grammar killed this book.
Near the beginning of the book we find the name of a translator, but a translator is not an editor. This novel is in serious need of a rewrite with a proper editor to guide the story into a good read.
To begin with, the sentence flow was tragic, in the sense that there were several instances of interchanging tenses. For example, "He rose quickly and gestures with his hands..." rose and gestures are not in the same tense in this sentence. There were far too may occasions that we see such a thing. Now, this could be a translation snafu, but it really injures the story in the long run. "He never even heard of that order." Was another really cringe worthy phrase in this book.
There were also many, many instances of added or missing words, as well as misspelled words and strange phasing. We have soldiers and soldjas, Marsh and Mash. There were times when the name of things like a sword were so close to the character's name that they were used interchangeably.
I also found the flow of the text to be rocky and uneven. There were no transitions between povs, and the formatting of the paragraphs were sometimes strange. To me, this felt like a rough draft in serious need of editing.
Onto the actual story. I found it to be remarkably similar to a DnD game. Not that that is bad, but the story could have been better with more depth. The characters were quite flat, except for the bard De-stick, but that was only because the rambling phrases he used were either incredibly annoying or ingenious. Personally, I found the constant need to rhyme particularly annoying, but that's my personal opinion.
My biggest pet peeve? Cutting the dragon's ear off. If they cut off the ears, it shouldn't become deaf. Not unless the entire portion of the ear canal, ear drum, etc. were cut off with it. I'm not an expert, but I can't seem to think of any animal that would have the entire hearing mechanism outside of the head in their ear. Can you? Maybe I'm wrong, but everything I've learned about anatomy says otherwise.
Long story short, this one just didn't cut it for me. I would have given up long ago if it weren't for the fact that it bugs me too much not to finish a story.
For my clean readers:
Includes violence, mild language, dark magic, and a description of torture and rape close to the end.