Under an Azure Sky

Elysia Dayne, Book 1

De: Wil Chan

Narrado por: Rhonda Pownall

They call me…Hero…Mercenary…Dragon Slayer.

But that wasn’t always the case.

There was a time when I thought that dragons were beautiful....

During my childhood, I believed that I was friends with a dragon, except the dragon never knew of this friendship.

Days after my 13th birthday, my secret was no longer mine to keep. Soldiers arrived to slay the dragon so that a feudal lord could make his name amongst the Nine Kingdoms. It ended in abject failure. They were left to soak in a bloodbath of their own making.

In a rage, the dragon destroyed the place that I called home, and killed the people that I called family. She also dismantled a thing that I called love.

Reborn under a mound of ashen corpses, my empty shell vowed vengeance, forging a fiery path of retribution that could not be undone.

Not by my own design, I inadvertently became a slayer of dragons. Curiously, dragon slaying isn’t my next job....

A princess is being held for ransom at a goblin fort. Wearing the stolen armor of a goblin knight, I attempt to rescue her to claim my prize.

When I met her, she was Winter. Now, she is Spring. Maybe I can learn to love again….

An award-winning literary epic fantasy novel. Winner of the "Global (Asia)" and "Fantasy" categories in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2021-2022 and Winner of the Sword & Sorcery category in the Global Book Awards 2022.

©2021 Wil Chan (P)2022 Wil Chan

A Fun Read

I enjoyed the book. It's the life and legacy of Elysia Dayne mixed with a W/W flirt/romance. The book isn't afraid to get dark at times while still giving you someone and something to root for.
I like doing things in a pro/con way, so here we go...

Pros:
-From really early on, I felt like the prose (word-choice) was really good and well thought out. It teeters on the line of flowery but doesn't cross it - everything is well understood. I guess you could say it's semi-poetic at times.
-The characters feel fully developed. No one feels like a stand-in, and everyone is distinct.
-The MC is likable. You feel for her when she goes through hardships or even struggles with her own thoughts. She's smart and capable, but still young and sometimes a bit stupid about things in a realistic way.
-The story is unpredictable at times. I think this is a pro and a con depending on where, when, and how. In particular, I enjoyed how the story ended. I didn't expect it.
-There's some humor sprinkled here and there, which I always enjoy. It's not very common and nothing made me burst out laughing, but when it showed up, it was nice.
-The magic system is interesting. I'd like to know more about it.
-The world feels well understood and built. It feels majestic yet grounded. You can tell a lot went into the worldbuilding.

Cons:
-More of a personal thing for me, but I'm not the biggest fan of stories that flip flop back and forth between time. Where the story begins (I'll call the Present time), is sometimes swapped for Elysia's past. I don't mind this once in a while, but it was a common thing within the story and I often found it jarring. Sometimes I didn't realize we had switched time periods right away. I'm not sure if the physical book shows this in some way, but the audiobook just put you in there and you had to figure it out through context. The first few times this happened, it was fine, but when it became a regular thing, and I didn't know when in Elysia's history we were, I sometimes found it a bit irritating.
-Also more of a personal thing. The narrator's portrayal of the princess also bothered me. Usually, it was fine, but when she got long spits of dialogue, I found it a bit grating and grew tired of the chosen voice.
-I did find the main relationship to grow really fast. There were times when I struggled to believe the relationship was genuine.
-I didn't get the impression that this was a full story on its own. A lot of the ups and downs are in Elysia's past. Maybe I'm just used to stories that focus more on the present, but I felt like Elysia's present was not the main thing of the story, and not a lot happened during it. It made the story feel somewhat detached. I could not identify what we were latching onto - like what the story was about. At times, it felt like it was about the relationship between the MC and the princess, at other times, it felt like a revenge story, or a learning-to-let-go story. In a way, it's all of those things, but at the same time, it's none of them. I felt that no identifiable subject remained the main piece for the whole story, which gave me a bit of mental whiplash when it came to 'what is this story about'.

Overall, it was a fun read. I would recommend it.

Great story Bad ending

The story started off great interesting characters, loved the voices. Background story was amazing however it left me with wanting more. Some cliffhangers really killed it for me.

Dragons and Revenge

Without giving anything away I'll say I enjoy this book and have read it several times. So when I saw there was a audible version of I figured I'd check it out. It was a bit slow in the beginning but picked up and moved along fairly well after that. I don't regret spending the credit I liked listening to this story as much as I liked reading it. I hope they add books two and three.