Review: Entertaining book.  Enjoyed reading it.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 26, 2013
I liked this book a lot.  Some people have complained that it's too long but I like longer books.  Most fantasy books I read now are only 300-350 pages and I tend to knock em off in just a couple hours.I felt like the main character who was Kazin didn't get enough spotlight with combat/action... He's a dragon mage who like the name suggests, can shapeshift into a dragon.  He's also a mage 10x stronger than just about any other mage, allowing him to cast powerful spells.  This makes him the most powerful character I believe.  But after he gained the ability to shapeshift, it seemed like he spent the majority of his time as a dragon taxi for everyone else. I dunno I just wished he had a more important role; mounted aerial combat and fast transportation were useful, but he seemed to turn into more of the role of a horse rather than a warrior.I've never really read Dungeon & Dragons books before, but from what I understand... this might be a little close to that genre...  You have 8 people who all have different strengths and weaknesses who work and travel together on a quest and combine their strengths when needed to overcome any obstacles.The beginning was kind of cheesy, very scripted.  It's like they'd be walking down the street and Character 2 will ask Character 1 how his job is going and Character 1 replies something like  "I really enjoy my job building firesticks for the Dwarves.  The Dwarves love to use them in their mines to blow up rock making their jobs much easier.  The way the firesticks work is there is a rod filled with magical explosive energy and a scroll that is unique to each rod.  To activate the explosives, you touch the scroll to the rod, and then read the words on the scroll which cause the rod to detonate."  Stuff like this only happens for the first few chapters which is good because it'd drive me crazy otherwise, and no conversation between two longtime friends would sound like that.I gave it 4 stars because although I didn't feel it was a perfect book (both with plot and writing), I found myself enjoying it a lot.  I will definitely read book #2 when it is released. I suspect this is the authors first book ever, so I'm expecting book #2 to be written much better and will receive 5 stars.