Moroda

World of Linaria, Book 1

De: L.L. MacRae

Narrado por: Georgie Leonard

In Linaria, dragons are revered as gods, airships command the skies, and war is brewing across the land.

Devastated by their father's death, Moroda and her sister struggle to make ends meet. Things go from bad to worse when a rogue dragon destroys their city.

Fleeing on a sky pirate's airship to escape the chaos, the sisters find themselves penned in by untrustworthy companions, a bloodthirsty warlord, and dragons on the rampage.

For Moroda, who would do anything to protect her sister, nowhere is safe. Not even the sky.

The balance of power in Linaria is tipping. Can one woman make a difference?

©2022 L.L. MacRae (P)2023 L.L. MacRae

I am conflicted

I am always happy to be able to review and therefore, promote a self-pub book!

However, I am sad that I am unable to sing this book's praises as much as I would love to.

This story has many things I enjoyed - sky pirates (hell yeah!), dragons, travelling (on a sky ship!) and adventures, many different types of magic and cultures. It, however, has just as many things I disliked. When a character driven reader like myself doesn't mention characters as one of her favorite things, it says a pretty important thing. I actively disliked almost all of the main characters, with the exception of Amarah and Kohl. I particularly couldn't stand Moroda and Palom. Palom is just a hypocrite in my eyes and Moroda is written to be a goody-two-shoes and a bleeding heart who can do no wrong (except that she does horrific things but because she is presented as this martyr character, the horrific things she did are pushed to the side and not truly discussed). Not that this type of character can't be interesting or well done (Nefertari Vivi from One Piece is a masterclass example, imo), but I found many illogicalities that grated on me a lot. Like, other characters would praise her left, right and center for the most basic of things and you can't tell me that a girl who lived as an uber rich person for most of her life suddenly feels uncomfortable having someone serve her for a day or two, even though she only lived as a "poor" person for only a year or two? No, Moroda is feeling uncomfortable about being waited upon because the author wanted to show us just how much of a bleeding heart Modora is, imo. And, of course, she is ultra talented in magic and becomes an OP magic user with basically no training (since apparently, it takes only four days to learn to 1. cast powerful magic spells, 2. create protective force shields and 3. fully immobilize people and only few more days to steal magic from far away. Honestly, I don't know why they even have universities of magic in this world if it's so easy?? Aaaah, I get it now! Only Moroda can do it, she's just that good! 🙄)

There are also plot illogicalities. Like, say you want to sneak onto a flying ship. You then, of course, park your own flying ship right on top of the deck of the ship you want to sneak onto. Because that is how stealth works. Or say you're a low level soldier, how has been a soldier for about two years? Ofc you have piloted a flying ship in that time. To the point that it offends when someone assumes otherwise! And it seems a ship captain can just leave the steering of her ship to person who has never flown a ship before, in a middle of a sky battle with tens of huge warships and heavy storms no less!

Listening to this book on audio was also a pain. I found the narrator, Georgie Leonard, to be so extremely mumbly that I couldn't understand every 6th or so word. I would have to go back again and again (and again) and more often than not, it didn't help. Like, to this day I still have no clue what is the name of weapons that Palom created.
It forced me to try and reread whole chapters on ebook, except, well, that didn't help either because the version of ebook that I have is significantly different from the audiobook. Like, some scenes are given to completely different characters, some scenes are not present in the ebook and some were not part of the audiobook. It was a mess and I was forced to suffer through the audiobook without help.

Now, I know that this is a debut so I can give it a lot of grace on many points and it is by no means a bad book, I am just very sad (and also very frustrated by a few things) that I didn't like it despite it basically being a perfect book for me, on paper.