Starlighter-Bryan Davis

Starlighter is the first book in Bryan Davis' newest Young Adult series, Dragons of Starlight.

Description:
Dragons are enslaving humankind and a black egg signals the end of the world. Jason Masters must journey to another realm and join forces with a slave girl named Koren to rescue the captives and save two worlds from destruction. What if the Legends Are True? Jason Masters doubted the myths: people taken through a portal to another realm and enslaved by dragons. But when his brother is taken, he must uncover the truth and find the portal before it's too late. Once he's through the portal, he meets Koren, a slave in the dragons’ realm, who struggles to destroy a black egg prophesied to doom all mankind. Jason and Koren must work together to save their two worlds before the dragons learn that their secrets have been discovered. In Starlighter, bestselling author Bryan Davis masterfully weaves fantasy and inspiration into a captivating novel for young adults

Plot:

The plot was not the usual Bryan Davis plot.  His pacing was much different then his past books which threw me for a loop.  Because there are two full plots, they both felt short.  It was as if you cut a book in half and then duplicated the first half, simply changing it up a little bit.  One moment I’m reading the beginning pages of the book, and the next I’m two pages until the end.  Not to say that this wasn’t just because of the pace.  I’m certain it was also because of the author’s ability to weave a fascinating tale-because that’s what it was, a fascinating tale.

Other then the change of pace, I loved the story.  It was an excellent mix of fantasy and science fiction.

Characters:

Jason and Koren are the main characters in two plots.  Jason is a swordsman on the ‘human’ planet trying to find the portal to the dragon planet while Koren is the human on the dragon planet trying to free herself and her fellow slaves from the dragons’ tyrannical rule.

I didn’t connect to either character very well.  I’m not going to try to dumb that down.  It’s a big deal.  If I can’t connect to a character then I don’t feel passionately for the characters.  Some books are plot-driven while others are character-driven.  I don’t mind a book that’s plot-driven, in fact, as far as I can tell, I’m a plot-driven writer.  But I still need to feel attached to a character on a deep level.  Sadly, I just didn’t connect with Koren or Jason.

Writing Quality:

When it comes to writing mechanics, the book was practically flawless.  No contrived dialogue.  No messed up dialogue tags or faulty descriptions.  It was great.  The problems are what I have stated before-besides those, the book was great.

Conclusion:

I can deal with the plot and the character problems.  Even what I’m about to say, I can deal with.  What I was really upset about was the rather small amount of God in the novel.  Sure, there were Christian themes and references to the Creator, but it wasn’t as spiritually uplifting as his previous works such as Dragons in Our Midst and Oracles of Fire.  I’m hoping this changes in the next books.

My Rating:

4 Pens

Genre: Young Adult Christian Fantasy
Intended age group:  12-15 (but can easily extend in either direction)
First installment in series
Where to buy:  Amazon, ChristianBook, or authors website (signed if requested).
You can get in contact with the author by going to his website where you can go to the very active forum, check out fan art or go to his blog.