REVIEW: One Realm Beyond by Donita K Paul

Title: One Realm Beyond

Author: Donita K Paul

Series: Realm Walkers

Publisher: Zondervan

Published Date: Jan 28, 2014

ISBN: 9780310735809

Genre: fantasy

Buy It Link: Amazon

Rating: 3 1/2 stars

Synopsis: Cantor D’Ahma waited his whole life for this day. Born with a gift to jump between worlds, the young realm walker is finally ready to leave his elderly mentor and accept his role as protector and defender of the realms.

But mere hours after he steps through his first portal, Cantor discovers that his job will be more dangerous and difficult than he ever imagined. The realms are plagued with crime and cruelty, and even members of the once-noble Realm Walkers Guild can no longer be trusted. To make matters worse, his first assignment - finding a dragon to assist him on his quest---has led him to Bridger, who is clearly inept and won’t leave him alone.

With the help of his new friends Bixby and Dukmee, Cantor must uncover the secrets of the corrupt guild before they become too powerful to be stopped. But his skills aren’t progressing as fast as he would like, and as he finds himself deeper and deeper in the guild’s layers of deceit, Cantor struggles to determine where his true allegiance lies.

Review: I received a copy of this book from BookLook Bloggers in exchange for an honest review.

The beginning of this book was a little hard to get into for me. More background information would have been useful, perhaps even a short introduction story. Once I was able to understand the surroundings and setting, it was a much easier read for me and quite enjoyable. I still can't quite visualize how a dragon in this story is supposed to look, whether it is Eastern or Western, or a combination of both, perhaps a drawing would have been nice too. I was always trying to visualise a Western type dragon, but it didn't always fit with the scene.

The characters of Cantor, Bixby and Bridger were all wonderful and easy to empathize with. There weren't enough scenes with Dukmee to get into a relationship with his character very well. I felt more connected to Cantor's old mentors than Dukmee. 

The storyline flowed well, and moved quickly enough for me to keep interested. Since this is my introduction book to this author, it was a good read, and I hope to be able to read the next one in this series.