Reviewed by Sarina

TITLE:  Locked

SERIES:  Telluric Realm #1

AUTHOR:  Anyta Sunday

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH:   330 pages

RELEASE DATE:  April 26, 2016

BLURB:

A curse threatens the Winter Kingdom.
A brother is turned to ice.
A rebel uprising is on the horizon.

Marble-maker Rye Cunnings is at the center of it all—and doesn’t know it.

He doesn’t know he’s the lost summer prince. Doesn’t know his blood can unlock Winter’s curse. Doesn’t know why the marbles he makes flutter with magic. All he thinks is that he’s crazy. That he sees things others don’t, like dragons and strange markings on his skin.

But when a dark dragon snatches away Rye’s only friend Milo, he is forced to face the crazy in his life and figure out a way to bring Milo back.

Help comes in the form of Cerdic Leit, a warrior who finds Rye to take him “home” to the Telluric Realm and their kind. All Rye has to do is follow him into Gatreau, the gateway to the four Telluric kingdoms, and all his questions will be answered.

In the hopes of saving Milo, Rye steps into this new and dangerous world. A world where he learns of the Tellurics and their Hansian foes. A world that is swept up in a bitter battle of justice and hate.

And a world that won’t let Rye leave again.

REVIEW:

Rye is going crazy.  At least, that’s what he figures is happening when he starts seeing things that aren’t there and finds himself waking up in the graveyard every week.  So when a man shows up and claims he’s from a different realm and that he’s come to take him home, Rye figures he’ll just get some sleep and the ridiculous hallucination will be gone by morning.  The problem with that is, Rye isn’t crazy and the man, Cerdic, is very much real…and telling the truth.  Now in a place he knows nothing about, surrounded by people with abilities he doesn’t understand, Rye finds himself struggling to remain adrift all the while searching for his missing friend and a way back home.  With a curse in need of breaking and political intrigue surrounding him on all sides, Rye will need to do much more than stay afloat; he’ll need to struggle above the waves threatening to drag him under and find the strength to save not only himself, but the world he’s coming to think of as home.

THIS, this book right here was such an eye opener I’m beginning to reevaluate what I’ve come to expect from a high fantasy novel.  When I started the book I’ll admit I was a little confused, much like Rye had to be with everything being thrown at him at once, but once I’d really settled myself down to read, I found myself very quickly drawn into the story.  When I found my reading groove I was, in a word, enthralled.  The characters are varied and extremely well developed; even the secondary characters were really well done and they added that little extra something with their interactions that made me enjoy them instead of dreading their appearances.

The world itself was imaginative and the descriptions were great; I had no trouble visualizing what Rye or any other character was seeing and that made going through the book easy and enjoyable instead of a chore.  The real star of the book, however, was the story itself. Filled with magic, curses, dragons and a level of political intrigue that was amazingly done, I loved every minute of it!  There was a lot going on here but I never once felt overwhelmed or confused and the farther into the story I got, the more it was apparent just how much time and effort the author went through to weave the different elements of the story together.

While there are no actual romantic relationships in the book, there are several couples you can see in the pre-relationship stage and that was actually really satisfying to me.  Everything just fit together so well that anything more than the hints weren’t needed.  I adored the interactions between the characters, both Rye and Cerdic, as well as others, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the relationships develop and change over the course of the series.  This book was seriously FANTASTIC and I can’t wait to both read it again, and continue the series whenever the second book comes out.  If you’re a fan of fantasy or enjoy a story with a good deal of intrigue and unexpected turns, you should enjoy this book.  I just loved it!

RATING:

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