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BOOK REVIEW: Beginning of a Hero by Charles E. Yallowitz

Hi everyone! I was gone for a week, but now I'm back with a review for Beginning of a Hero by Charles Yallowitz, a great author and also someone I'd call a super-blogger! I also interviewed him last week. Check it out here!

BEGINNING OF A HERO by Charles Yallowitz

I was going to post a review for this last week, but got distracted by something that relates to this book. What was it? A flying cat? A man with two heads? No, it was Dota 2, a FREE game that features dragons, lichs, gnomes and demonic elves just like in the book I'm reviewing today.

The Lich in Dota 2. Na'vi experiment gone wrong.
Even though I consider myself a big sci-fi guy, fantasy has always been a big part of my life. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was the first set of books that I read willingly and I've also played a lot of video games, with the most popular being the Diablo and Warcraft games.

So all this fantasy stuff is very familiar to me, but that's enough from me for now. How was the book?

WHATS THE BOOK ABOUT?
It's about this young half-elf guy who takes on a mission to protect a royal heir at an academy for noobs. The problem is, our young half-elf hero dude doesn't know the identity of the heir and blah-blah-blah.


Any stories about protecting royalty or a President's daughter or something always bore me to sleep because to put it simply, I really don't have any empathy for people of royalty because frankly, they don't deserve it

The news media went Royal Baby crazy a while back when Prince Junior and his wife were having a baby. I didn't understand why everyone was bonkers over it, with some sounding like they were having a baby themself. Then one friend on Facebook mentioned that Prince Junior's kid could be my next future King one day—yeah, and so what? Does the baby have telepathic powers? Can he teleport?

Can he do this? If not, stay in the womb, kid.


The title of King is virtually pointless and meaningless in this day and age, unless you're still brainwashed by all this royalty crap. When the Queen visited Australia, Australian taxpayers had to foot the bill for her trip here, which is pretty fucking ridiculous.

The only good thing about Queen Lizzie is that I get an extra day of holiday every year, which is more than welcome. 

People worship royalty as if it's something to be highly regarded. If these royal beings can't contribute something great to the world, then they should be treated just like Kim and Kanye, Jay Z and Beyonce and a host of other celebrities that pollute our airwaves.

Sorry, it wouldn't be a Tuan Ho book review without a slight digression.

SO WHAT'S REALLY GOOD?
The characters. When you have a book that is fairly formulaic in it's plot—you better have some wonderful characters to make up for it. And boy does this have some great characters. There's this little dragon dude named Fizzle who is cute and very endearing (x1000).

Then there's a priest, a gnome, some character named Nimby and our main hero. The interplay between them is funny and always a joy to read.

And lastly, there's a lot of action. The last two-thirds have a ton of fighting and conflict that the author does magnificently. It's one of those books that starts off slow and just snowballs until you find yourself thinking: "I'm really loving this book!"

And that's what happened. By the end of the book, I couldn't help but love the characters and the book as well.

Speaking of a characters—writing likeable characters isn't an easy thing to do. One of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clarke is a master at spewing out spell-binding prose and an intoxicating imagination in his stories, but there's one thing he simply SUCKED AT and that's writing characters that you can relate to. The only two characters he ever managed to do superbly weren't even human at all—Karellen, the alien in Childhood's End and the HAL 9000, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

ANY NITPICKS?
The two young female characters both have names starting with the same letter—Kira and Kellia. When you're speed reading, you can easily get the two mixed up.

So what are you waiting for? Buy the book now. For only 99 cents, you're getting hours of entertainment.

BOOKS I'M CURRENTLY READING
Wool by Hugh Howey

Leather to the Corinthians by Tom Lucas
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

BOOKS I'M PLANNING TO READ

Prodigy of Rainbow Tower by Charles E. Yallowitz 
Night Bells by L.M. Sherwin
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Highmage's Plight by D.H. Aire

And a shitload of other books on my shelf and kindle. I can't wait to read them all!

I also just finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. In short, it's a stunning book. A true sci-fi classic. I'll post a full review of that sometime this century. Look out for it.

Also, feel free to leave a comment if you think I was too harsh about The Queen and her kids.

Thanks for reading!

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Until next time, something wonderful awaits!


BOOK REVIEW: Beginning of a Hero by Charles E. Yallowitz Reviewed by Unknown on 11:56 Rating: 5
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