Rowan Greenwood is an ordinary girl with ordinary problems living in the kingdom of Darmid where all forms of magic is banned. However, after she saves a mysterious eagle from her nation’s “magic hunters” she is forced into an adventure. The mysterious eagle it turns out is actually a shape shifting man named Aren (a prince from neighboring magic using kingdom) who is a mind-reader and mind-controller. He has been tasked with finding a magic user in Darmid for his evil brother Severen’s evil plans.

However, Rowan unknowingly uses magic to save Aren’s life. Feeling indebted to her, he betrays his brother and helps her escape. They go on an adventure where she learns that she has magic, but it has been bound up inside her and she cannot break it free. Forced into this adventure, she agrees to go with him where she meets mer-folk, a dragon, and a lot of villains in hit pursuit of her and Aren.

Kate Sparkes brings us an excellent book that is full of adventure. I highly recommend it! As a guy who likes to read science fiction and fantasy, I enjoyed it a great deal. I was pleased with the limitations she put on the magic users in her stories. Even some of my favorite authors had their wizards and witches doing extraordinary things at weird times and I’d be like, “Hey, why didn’t you do that before,” etc.

The book is told in first person narrative from the perspectives of Rowen and Aren. It switches back and forth between them, but there is no room for confusion. The author does a good job of making the characters unique in their thoughts and voices. A couple of times, I got lost in some of the story. The scenes would jump quickly and I would have to back track to see what happened, but those instances were rare. At times, the dialogue between the two characters were somewhat boring, but that might be because I am an action junkie.

She says it the first in a trilogy and I look forward to reading the next two books.

This review was based on a copy forwarded to me by the author. As a book reviewer, this is my first “official” review requested by an author.