Custodian of the Luima Legacy

by: Gabrielle Poplar

Blurb:  Fastian was the First Minister of Estruchi. He had no living relatives or dependents, except for Meryl, the son of his house keeper, who lived in his house and served as his ward. To the outside world, his life was uncluttered and devoted to serving King Arpad of Estruchi.
King Arpad was determined to free his kingdom from servitude to neighboring Bahadi, and he charged Fastian with the task of obtaining the Light sword that he intended to use to press his claims for freedom.
Fastian and his ward travelled to Bahadi to steal the Light sword, but in the course of carrying out the King’s orders, Meryl’s life was threatened. In a bid to save his ward’s life, Fastian revealed that Meryl was not a servant’s son, and that he was the custodian of an ancient legacy.

Genre: Fantasy

Grade: C

I received this book from a First Reads giveaway on Goodreads.com  When I first received the book, I was underwhelmed by the cover.  Although I've always been told to never judge a book by its cover, we all do it. 

Overall, I did enjoy this book.  It had a very solid storyline, and the author does a great job immersing the reader into their fantasy world.  I was very pleased on Meryl's outcome!  I found myself rooting for him throughout the novel.

Unfortunately, I do have some gripes, which is what lowered the grade of this book.

• The novel started out very slow, and had quite a few dry spots.  I think there was plenty of opportunity for the author to fast forward through time and erase some of these dull spots.
• The quotes. OH THE QUOTES! There were mismatched quotation marks all through this novel. There were parts where what was written was obviously a part of dialogue, but there were no quotes. There were hanging quotes, where the ending quotes were there, but not the starting and vise vera. There were quotation marks randomly where no one was talking. It's as if the quotation mark button was broken on the author's computer, so they were just a mess.
• There were minor grammatical errors. They were sparse, and nothing compared to the quotation mark fiasco.
• The ending was a bit unnerving. Considering the author went into great detail to explain everything thus far in the story, the entire battle consisted of about two pages. There were at least two chapters just for the sword ceremony, but a battle was only two pages? Seemed a bit off for me.

Overall I would recommend this book, even with the problems that it had, because it really was a great story. I do feel that it could be easily improved to be a great, grade A novel.