Bond of a Dragon: Publisher's Pack

Bond of a Dragon, Books 1-2

By: AJ Walker

Narrated by: Ben Farrow

Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's Summary

Contains books one and two of Bond of a Dragon, a fast-paced adventure fantasy series featuring fierce dragons, powerful magic, and a hero fighting for justice.

Zahara's Gift, book one

Nineteen-year-old Anders lived a fairly normal life until the only family he had was taken away from him. When he finds himself forced to embark on an action-packed adventure, he discovers there is more to the world than he was told. The magical force that flows within everything around him becomes revealed. Dragons, elves, orcs, and goblins lurk around nearly every turn along the path as he pursues his two kidnapped cousins.

As Anders discovers more about his family’s past, he learns of their involvement in the War of the Magicians and the circumstances leading up to the attack of his hometown. When Anders is told about his potential involvement in a prophecy involving dragons and their powerful magic, he will need to make a difficult decision. Will he continue to follow the path that is laid out for him, or can he make his own destiny? Will he ever be reunited with his family again? And if he succeeds, will he ever be able to return to the life he once knew?

Secrets of the Sapphire Soul, book two

Anders knows the war to stop Merglan from reclaiming his grip on the world is just beginning. With no certainty about where or when Merglan will attack next, Anders and his companions must take action to stay one step ahead of the cruel sorcerer and his evil dragon.

As he searches for ways to stop Merglan’s domination of their world, Anders discovers more than he expected. With several nations of Kartania on the brink of collapse, he must make a difficult decision. Is the young rider ready to deal with the consequences he’s facing? Can Anders overcome the odds and unravel the secrets of the sapphire soul?

©2020 AJ Walker (P)2020 Podium Audio

Not bad but feels like i have heard it before

If you have learned to Eragon series it has the same basic premise. It's still pretty good though.

Dragon Copy

The writer most likely read eragon while writing this book. It is most unoriginal material. The main character is boring, way too over powered, and has no development.

Just....bad.

I'll keep it short sorta or it will turn into an angry rant. The narrator is bad with accents. The elves sound like someone trying to do a German or Austrian accent with something stuck in their throat it's the same with the Islanders.

There are so many elements to this book that are either cliche or if you've read/listened to other fantasy books, you will tell where he's taking stuff from. So basically near no originality and what is there feels like the type of writing that's meant to fill the checklist of what should be there rather than creating a good story.

I could go on and on but what bothers me the most about this book is that it proves you can't trust the stars rating on audible. Of it was honest, this book should have 2 stars at most.

Feels too Predictable and Generic

Many other reviews are correct; this is VERY close to Eragon's plotline. I would like to point out a few other issuess that are less mentioned:

-The dragon herself is incredibly underdeveloped and uninteresting. She is barely in the story; appearing for key plot devices only as a Deus ex machina to the protagonist's problems.

- We spend a great deal of time being given exposition. Some times about species/places that hold no relevance to the current story objectives. Other times to just explain important plot points in the quickest/easiest way possible.

Overall, this story feels like a DnD homebrew that was turned into a book. It SOUNDS great in someone's head, but on paper, it fell apart for me.

Good read odd narration

The story is great and I really enjoyed it. The voices in narration were quite odd in my opinion, but if you can get past swedish elves it's a great listen.

Interesting story, I enjoyed it.

Excellent narration. I was impressed with the narrator's accenting. The elvish accents were obviously germanic while the dwarves were scotch I think, and the humans English... it made identifying who was talking in the story easy and enhanced listening to it, I think. I'll listen to the next one I think, see where the story goes.

inviting storyline

the limited range of the reader did not do the story the prop depth needed. sometimes the accent assigned to a character change between appearances

first fantasy novel.

loved it. I'm a woodworker and use Audible for hours a day. this was my first time trying out a fantasy novel and I'm so happy this was opening my welcome to the genre.

This story is very similar to Eragon

The story is entertaining enough, however most books I listen too I can't put them down until done. I never experienced the same excitement when listening to this book.

I never felt a real connection with the characters or story.

The narration was okay.

it's good this came as a bundle, I definitely would not have used an additional credit on book 2. I haven't decided if I'll get the third book to finish the story but may since I'm not currently listening to anything else.

great

I love these books, as I'm listening to them they play like a movie in my head..... they would make a great movie

Overall well worth a listen

Let me get the negative out the way... the negative being about 50% of book one. This took so long to get any sort of traction to move the story along in a meaningful way. Once the story develops it slowly starts to grip hold of you.
By book 2 its flowing at a steady pace and builds nicely. Again sometimes it seems the writer looses the momentum by jumping from one point to another.
but the end i would be quite happy to listen to book 3 and 4.
The narrator is well above average and makes the difference between quitting or sticking with it.