An Ambitious Creation

"What an ambitious attempt this story is, especially since it is not a self-contained story but more a prelude, a window into an epic world. Clearly the author has thought about this world a lot, and created a fully-realized world with all of its creatures, customs, and classes. The enthusiasm the author brings to this tale makes it live, and the narrative gallops along at a nice clip, bring us deeper and deeper into the world and its inhabitants. The story itself borrows from many classics of the genre, such as Eragon and even a work like Dinotopia (if anyone remembers that), which is not a bad thing: having good taste in what one emulates is the mark of a great storyteller! I think the author can (or will) continue to move away from this inspiration in future works or as this story goes on. It's still very enjoyable in its own right, and might attract many readers because of the similar story line and character. Where this story strikes off on its own is through the dialogue, which is often amusingly anachronistic, and makes the characters distinctly alive for the reader. I particularly liked the scene where Ky'ai confronts the Council over their hypocrisy and watches them squirm. in discomfort. We feel like there's something at stake for him here, and we realize that even a fantastic world has its seedy politics. Small criticisms would be the misspellings that become more frequent as the story goes on, as in "He may have been pray to a dragon but in truth, he was still a predator." (prey/pray). Also, I would work more on your sentences, since they tend to be long, and some of them are run-on sentences (when a period is needed but you use a comma and extend the sentence to its breaking point). Small matters, of course, but sometimes how a story is told is just as important as what is told. And this is a fine, epic fantasy tale which deserves to be clothed in the most exquisite and expansive language. So also think about how you want it to sound: do you want characters to say "crap!, which sounds very modern (which can be fine), or do you think this pulls the reader too much out of the exotic locale? Maybe you could invent your own curses to add local color? There's no right way to do this, it just depends what effect you want it to have on the reader. But all in all, this is a fantastic debut on Inkitt and I'm impressed with the author's world-building and evocative story telling. Keep at it!"