Review: Book One: Dragon (Histories of Purga) by Rustin Petrae

Book One: Dragon by Rustin Petrae

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I simply could not put this down. Book One: Dragon by Rustin Petrae is an outstanding story in which fantasy and science fiction are seemlessly melded together in a believable world.

The story begins with Prince Rone, the bored heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Roanoke, a technologically advanced civilization whose citizens make use of personal nanobots and blueprint programs to build a nearly limitless variety of machines for themselves.

Feeling trapped by the duties and responsibilities that are his birthright, The Prince yearns for freedom, but settles for minor acts of rebellion instead . Getting a rare ok from his father to go on a solo flight (using a flightpack he designed for his nanobots), the Prince jumps at the opportunity, only to be shot down by a missile after an hours long chase that takes him to the far edge of the desert adjacent to his kingdom.

Meanwhile, Keiara and her little brother, Asher, are setting out to collect some herbs for a local healer in the distant Terraquois held lands. Unlike the people in the Kingdom of Roanoke, the Terraquois live a simple life, so close to nature that most of them are able to take on the form of the animal with which their souls resonate. Their homes are, for the most part, high in the bows of massive trees, which are linked together with suspended bridges.

Keiara, like Prince Rone, is unhappy with her lot in life and desires nothing more than to explore the entirety of Purga, including the land of the Rooks (the Terraquois name for the people living in the Kingdom of Roanoke). In the desert, she and her brother find Rone unconscious and critically injured and she decides to save him, though others of her race would have either finished him off or simply left him to die instead.

From there the story takes off in a whirlwind of action, social angst, love and magic. Every element of this story works: the dynamic characters, the fantastic world of Purga, the long standing fear and hate between the Rooks and the Terraquois, the technology, and the magic.

This is one of those stories that makes you want to read everything the author has written, and more than once. I can honestly say I cannot wait to read the next one.



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