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The premise of Sandra Fallon’s first novel Reign of the Dragon is a fairly common, but successful formula for a fantasy novel; a reluctant motley crew of heroes banding together to defeat an evil wizard. The opening scene of the novel is gripping and immediately draws the reader into the story. I was turning the pages frantically after the engrossing beginning.

While a fairly common story such as the one presented here can be and has been retold hundreds of times with a new and interesting spin, the story in Reign of the Dragon could have been a bit more original. The characters were fairly standard, were interesting but could have been a bit more fleshed out. I thought the Queen was a quite interesting character and mixed things up fairly well.

The main problem was an overall sense of inconsistency. The novel seemed a collection of scenes that simply happened without any real sense of connection. On the back of the book the queen is said to have an unfit son, however; we are not introduced to the son until the novel is nearly two-thirds of the way complete. One of the main characters, Drodan, at times came across as very dumb, while at other times out in a world he hadn’t seen seemed very insightful. Another inconsistency was when the wizard initially summoned his demon, the name was Dindon, later in the book the wizard is speaking to a demon named Didon, supposedly the same demon.

Overall the novel is passable, with a couple of interesting characters-Silver, the wolf-mage and Lyka the lizard changeling. The novel would benefit from a copyedit/proofread and adding some background to the creatures, depth to the characters and an overall history to the world.

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