Review: She'll do anything to regain control of her kingdom.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 8, 2011
Liberator's Ruin essentially tells the story of a small kingdom that had been invaded by a larger neighbor and overthrown. The royal family was ruthlessly murdered. One daughter, however, managed to escape and has dedicated herself to eradicating the foreign invaders from her home country. All she cares about is whatever will help her win her cause.I really liked this story. I loved how well thought-out this book was, from start to finish. This small country had been conquered by a much larger, much more powerful one. The lone surviving member from the royal family leads a pack of insurgents. It's a constant struggle for Princess Julianna, or Anna as she calls herself now, to stay alive, to continue to hammer at the invaders where it hurts the most. I loved how the author painted a gritty, realistic populace who aren't too terribly concerned that their monarchs had been dethroned, and they are just as happy, if not more so, with this new government as opposed to the old one.Mr. Johns' book follows several different storylines, whether we are accompanying Anna on a raid, or are with the dashing captain Nathaniel as he's rescuing damsels in distress, or are with the High Inquisitor as he plots how to destroy the insurgents once and for all. I love any fantasy story that creates its own technology and does an adequate job explaining how it works, what the components are, etc. This story is no exception. I won't give too much away only to say that I can't wait for commercial availability of the lightmass engines!!!I found a few critiques that bothered me with this story. There were quite a few fragmented sentences used throughout the book. I came across typos, which I could easily overlook. I found that some of the speech quotation marks were missing, making it difficult to follow some of the dialog. Difficult, but not impossible. But one of the oddest things I found was that sometimes there was a completely different word in place that shouldn't be there, almost as if the spellchecker suggested the wrong word. That tripped me up a few times, but still, in the overall scheme of things, it didn't do that much to detract from the story. The one character that bothered me the most was Anna. I was beginning to think that I was the only one who was thinking she was flat-out cold hearted, not at all how a princess should act. Yes, she's been through hell, and yes, she just wants to rid her kingdom of the invaders. However, I though her cold demeanor was a bit too cold at times. But, that's how the author wrote the character. Wait 'til you get to the end.I feel that with another coat of polish on this story, I could very easily give it 5 out of 5 stars. As it is, I still plan on reading it again! Good job Mr. Johns!