Books and Ashes

I received this book from a giveaway done by the author and was asked to give it a review once I had finished it.

The Descendant of Destiny is the debut novel of Marion Hill in the United Kammbia Series. While listed as a fantasy book, The Descendant of the Destiny is not like your typical fantasy book. There are no dragons or mythical creatures that I read about, I don't remember magic even really being a thing in the story, yet the element that puts it as one is a "chosen one" prophecy. I actually thought that part was done well, but it was a tad predictable when you first learn about it, yet the way it was carried out was different. A book known as The Book of Kammbia is the book that tells about the prophecy that our protagonist, known as Diondray Azur, and teaches him that everything he has been taught growing up was apparently not as it seems. There is terminology in the book that is unfamiliar but quite obviously meant to parallel things from our world. One of the things that sticks out is the religion, and to me I felt that The Book of Kammbia is meant to parallel The Bible and many of the pieces do seem to match up with it but there are also clearly several other things that went into making the religion of the people in his world. One of the problems I had with the novel was that, despite its length of 104 pages, there was too much crammed into it and not enough we get to learn about the characters. I felt it could have been better if it had been longer and we had had more time with the story. But overall, it was clearly well plotted and for a debut book, its actually not that bad. I look forward to potentially reading the second book in this series, which the author has said will most likely published in the later part of Spring 2015.