Review: Better written than first two books
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2014
Since the last battle in Everville, Mallory, a Fron turned evil, plots to hoard all the power from the element for himself by harnessing the goodwill of the newly hatched dragon, Rathlar, and initiating an inter-universe war between the Alarians and the inhabitants Everville. Owen faces his toughest task yet and struggles to complete it even whilst his friends are being decimated by the Alarians.I think The Rise of Mallory was better written than the first two (maybe because of experience?). A few typos noted - I think he'll probably fix this? Anyway, this could be an early copy since I borrowed it on Kindle Prime (free trial! ha!).The story is more complex and Huff manages to weave most of the seemingly loose ends from The First Pillar and The City of Worms. However, in usual form, Huff messes up the narrative through excessive info dumps, taking you back and forth over the material a few times. I don't know why he can't do a slow reveal of some of these "secrets" through conversations or over several chapters rather than telling you "this and that" happened in one chapter and then a chapter later someone confirms "yes, it really happened".There's some time jumps back and forth due to the nature of Owen's task too - and while it was interesting (life as an Alarian!) I felt that it was a little under-developed. I mean, he could have done SO MUCH MORE with it.At any rate, I think this rates about a 2.5 stars. Hopefully the next one gets better.