Awesome listen!

Enter a world of fairies, humans and dragons (and wizards!!!) and their war against Rectar, the lord of the demons and his army of... well, demons. :D I know what some of you are thinking. Same ol' Good vs Evil fantasy book, right? Not so fast! While this story embraces the traditional good vs. evil trope, it breaks the mold. It does it differently. A couple of tropes common to fantasy fit here. Farmboy prince fits as well, but this one is implemented in such a way that it almost feels like Miller is saying 'yeah, but in his defense, he was the prince first.' It touches on the traditional, but is refreshingly different.

I love some humanoid dragons, or dragons that can become humanoid. It makes them a bit more relatable (and it opens things up for some sweet, sweet dragon/not dragon roooomance - I AM WITHOUT SHAME). Dragons in this particular case, seem to be mostly dicks to anyone who isn't also a dragon, despite the situation of sort of needing to team up against the greater enemy. Darnuir starts this story as the sort of pompous, arrogant, know-it-all heir to the king of the dragons (whose name is Draconis, because of course the king of the dragons is named Draconis). His father doesn't trust him to wield the Dragon's Blade, a very powerful flying sword that only the royal line of dragons can wield. He says that Darnuir isn't ready for it, which of course pisses off Darnuir because he thinks he is ready for it! He couldn't be more ready for it!

Darnuir is mortally wounded and the only thing that can save him is the dragon king's resident court wizard, Brackindon (I probably spelled that wrong. Audiobook.), who does the only thing that he can do to save Darnuir. He performs a rebirthing spell that more or less rewinds Darnuir's life and turns him into an infant, and then he leaves him in the care of a group of hunters, of which the more or less leader is a friend of his. 'I'll be back in six months!' he says. Fast forward to twenty years later, and Darnuir has come of age to wield the Blade, and while there have been many years of radio silence from them, the demons are now redoubling their efforts.

We get some of the early parts of Darnuir's new life from his point of view, which was actually pretty interestingly thought out. The entire growing up again montage is summed up well, doesn't seem intrusive on the overall flow of the story, and is yet informative on what sort of (second) childhood that he has. Darnuir is raised as a human the second time around. He has no idea what he is, but his abnormally brute strength is noticeable to more than one person in his life, including himself at least once. It's kind of a wonder that nobody figured it out sooner. This simple life humbles him, though. He comes from a more humble upbringing this time around and that is the key to wielding the Blade the way his father would have wanted. Brackindon comes back (20 years late, but as we all know, a wizard is never late but arrives precisely when he means to) with the Dragon's Blade in tow and all is revealed.

Darnuir is a cool character who I started off not liking because he wasn't very likable, but I ended up cheering for him, because when his old, arrogant personality starts to try and break through, he tries his very hardest to not be that person, and tries to restrain himself. Where Blaine and the other dragons tend to continue the tradition of being dicks to humans (and women of all races), Darnuir brings his human upbringing into play to smooth things out.

My favorite characters are more or less in the background though. First is Dukuna (am I close? This one was a tough guess on spelling ^_^), one of Rectar's underlings and the first character we get introduced to. A demon lord's underling who is in a position that he doesn't want to be in. We see some of the book from his POV. He hates Rectar and considers himself a prisoner. He even has other demons that he sympathizes with. It's pretty neat. I actually cheered for him the most. The second is Lyra, the lady dragon who isn't taking any of Blaine's crap about lady dragons not being allowed to be warriors. You go girl.

The action/battle scenes were well written and made it easy to imagine the action that was taking place. I was transported into the world of this book quite easily. The magic system is described as a cascade and I thought that was quite an interesting way to think of magic. Like a waterfall, kind of. The plot takes a couple of turns that you don't see coming, and it doesn't plod along. I thought it was quite well written and plotted out quite nicely. It wasn't overly complex, but it was complex enough that I was immersed quite thoroughly.

The narrator totally nailed it. Dave Cruse's narration of this book is more than slightly reminiscent of Simon Vance. Dave Cruse gave each character an appropriate voice and tone and told the story very well! Some pretty brilliant accents were peppered throughout, and I quite enjoyed the listen! My only criticism here is that when characters are having an inner monologue moment, which they do from time to time, a better way to differentiate that would be awesome. As it stands, it just seems like the same character speaks but... a little muffled. When they're inner monologuing in the middle of a spoken conversation, this can be confusing.

What a great debut! The best part was watching a character that I didn't really start out liking turn himself into a character that I liked rather a lot. I did really dig this story, and really enjoyed my time with this listen! I'm excited to read (or hopefully listen!) to the next book in the series!

I was given a free review copy of this audiobook by the author in exchange for an honest review.

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7 people found this helpful

Very Long

I got this book via audiobook boom. The narrator was very good. the story had lots of twists and turns and sometimes just gave too much information. The description of the king took almost two minutes. Those are the things I am talking about. The story was developed and it was interesting how Daniur's character took over the story and made his way to being the one who could control the dragon blade. Nice fantasy just a little long for me.

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5 people found this helpful

Fantastic dragons

A fantastic tale told by a fantastic narrator! Gotta love some dragons. get into it.

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2 people found this helpful

Strong beginning

Book starts off rather slow with the protagonist being a nasty little shit. However eventuallly he grows to be more endearing.

It’s a strong start to a fantasy series and I hear the second book is much better

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1 person found this helpful

Dragons Like They've Never Been Portrayed

I really enjoyed Miller's different take on dragons and his consistent adherence to their cultural attitudes. It provoked an immediate and continuing emotional response from me.

I got grabbed by the story in each of its segments, wanting to know more about the life of the protagonist in each of his life phases. A few early on mishaps to people surrounding him allowed me to feel real tension at the expendability of anybody on the cast and that allowed that tension to be repeatedly thrummed by Miller.

Cruse did an excellent job with the narration. His approach was as the soft spoken storyteller and so often he faded into the background as the scene took the lead. At first I thought this was unremarkable but came to realize that is just the sort of well-calibrated effort this book needed.

I give it a 4 star instead of 5 because I'm not sure if I am sated in this storyline or not. I was left with some tantalizing ways for the magic to go in the next book, as well as a daring heist to rescue the girl, but I feel like I'm at a nice cozy spot with this group of characters and I'm hesitant to follow them to a place where things have to get more complicated.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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1 person found this helpful

Memory and Magic

The Dragon's Blade: The Reborn King is Michael R Miller's debut novel. It was a very interesting read, and had some clever new ideas I had not encountered in the fantasy genre before. I found shadow travel, the gemstones, staff trees, and the magic system of cascade energy to be particularity intriguing. And while I have read stories where magic has a price, I really enjoyed Miller's treatment of this idea. I loved his emphasis on magic and memory for the themes.

There was a lot of world building and history in The Reborn King. It was well done, and added much to the development of the story. There is a large cast of characters, and while there were many that were developed, there are many more that can be more fully fleshed out in subsequent books. The main character, Darnuir, is fascinating. Many times a main character will have internal conflict, but Darnuir's conflict is very unusual, with many years of influence from each of the two opposing schools of thought colouring his judgment.

My only minor quibble with the book was regarding Darnuir's younger years growing up with the hunters. I enjoyed the history and seeing into that part of his life, but I wasn't a fan of how it was presented. The jumps from 2yrs, 6 months, 1yr, 2yrs etc was jarring. I would just get interested in what was happening at that time in his life and then the time would jump again. It just felt awkward and pulled me from the story each time. That being said, for others who feel the same, persevere because once you get past that section the story is very well done.

While I almost never compare books/authors (as everyone gets something different out of a story and it's like comparing apples and oranges), I just wanted to mention that to me The Reborn King had the same 'feel' to it as Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series.

The Reborn King had some resolution at the end, but it does have a continuing storyline. Thankfully, for those who don't like to wait, the second book is out:) I have to admit, I'm looking forward to exploring more in this world. And I have to add that I'd love if someone did an illustration of the swords, they sound gorgeous!

Narration: Dave Cruse was fine narrator. He had many voices and accents to cover and did them all justice. He had an intesting method for doing internal monologue that I hadn't heard before. It took a little to adjust to it and realize what he was doing, but then I enjoyed his approach. I'm glad to see he is narrating the second book as well. I'm looking forward to listening to more of his narrations.

For those who like to know... there is no sex, I don't recall any profanity, and while there was a great deal of fighting and death, there wasn't a lot of explicit details, so it wasn't gory.

I received The Dragon's Blade: The Reborn King free in exchange for an unbiased review.

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1 person found this helpful

Dullest story ever!!!

The beginning seemed interesting but as it got on in story it just was boring. Fight after fight with demons and dragons, and humans just wasn’t a good story line.
The narration was beautiful but the story line not so good!

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love the book

I like the book a lot. I can't wait for the next one in the series

*nothing to do with the book, but forcing us to write a review 🙄 is the worst thing audible doing. makes me not want to rate books anymore. not all of us like to leave a review!

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A great classic fantasy with dragons

If you’re a fan of fantasy, there’s nothing not to like about this book.
It’s nothing out of the box in terms of themes or world-building, but I believe Miller really shines here when it comes to amping the drama and creating suspense.
I was surprised by how much I liked this novel. The title and description really do remind you of a litRPG novel, but it didn’t feel like one. This book is a much more polished and well crafted version of a reincarnation ‘tale-as-old-as-time.’
The performer doesn’t have great range when it comes to making new voices for characters, but the diversity of his ability to do accents was fun and helped distinguish more.
Just a great novel that I recommend to fantasy fans. Even though the dragons are humanoid, they are still awe-inspiring.

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Highly rated, but not for me

A lot of other reviews acknowledge that the other books are more exciting and that this first one is a bit slower. It was indeed slow. I found it hard to care about much of anything that was going on, and the parts that I did care about seemed to last all of 30 seconds. But other portions of the book the author will go on for 20 minutes about a bit of fabric hanging from a wall.

The thing that killed this audiobook for me the most and what made it so I won't be continuing the series is how they handled the character's inner monologue. The narrator would do a kind of whisper or cover his mouth or something. It made his voice sound wet(?) and made me want to start attacking anything around me. Since about a 1/4 of the book seems to be inner monologue, it made finishing the book more difficult.

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