Review: The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir, and The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

Posted by bkristin on Aug 31st, 2012 in reviews | 0 comments

Review: The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

Jack takes medicine to help his heart, or so he thinks. Instead he finds out rather unexpectantly that the medicine represses the warrior stone in his chest and he is now a chess piece in a game he never intended to play.

This book is filled with what is now the norm cliché for YA books. Unknown hero in small town suddenly has powers- his nerdy friend and sporty friend cannot be told the truth, but his ex-girlfriend tries to sell him to the highest bidder and his new love interest is not everything she pretends to be. That being said, this book was published in 2007- meaning it was written before that and a lot of what is overdone now was not then.

This story had tons of people to keep track of and some such as Linda came and went quite easily in the story. I think the hardest part of this was that you don’t see the physical changes in Jack until you read the second book which is from the prospective of a new character. Also, sometimes I felt the author gave too much away with some characters making you know who the bad guys were before the main character did. I would have liked more focus on Jack as I found his story to be interesting.

While the book felt dated- that being only because it was written before everything really has been overdone in ya and you can’t hold that against the book since it was written a while ago.

 

Review: The Wizard Heir  and The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

Seph is an orphan with a large trust fund and a tendency to set fires- completely on accident.  After being shipped off to a strict all boys’ boarding school, Seph learns he is a wizard. Unfortunately, the cult like president of the school is the only one willing to train him. When Seph finally escapes, he learns the truth and who his parents really are. Continueing, we now are following both the story of Seph and Jason along with Maddie who is forced to move back home to watch her siblings. With her eyes now open to the wizard world, Maddie finds that there are a few wizards in her own community and the same people that have been causing trouble her whole life for her. As she finds her destiny, she now has the power to change the fate of everything.

The second book focuses on a completely new character. We find out part way through the book he is the cousin to Jack from the first book, so there is a relationship, but it is like starting a whole new book set in the same setting. I normally do not like this kind of thing, but the writer such a good writer, I found myself wanting to read more.  The first book focused on Jack and his becoming a warrior. The second book focused on Seph- who was not in the first book, but related by blood to Jack being that he is his cousin. The third book focused mainly on Jason and Maddie: Jason being in the first book as the one to teach Seph and Maddie as Seph’s love interest and Dragon Heir. It was nice to see a series written that did not focus on only one character as many times it gets overdone and you get sick of the character. This nicely gave new people to learn about that we slightly knew from other books and now get to see more in action. It could have helped to not have look at as many people and focused more on Jason and Maddie, but I liked the concept.

While I understand this is a young adult book, there seemed to be a complete lack of adults in this story. Saving their society is made up to a bunch of teenagers. I never figured out why Leander and Linda stayed away when the final battle was mounting. They had made it to the castle in England and overthrew it, but once they got what they wanted and knew the dragon stone was gone, why did they stay? They didn’t seem to care about their own child back home in the US.

Good read and enjoyable series.

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