Land of Myth by Becka Sutton

Title: Land of Myth
Series: The Dragon Wars Saga
Author: Becka Sutton
Length: 4150 Kindle units
Rating: 2 stars

The Plot

Lydia, Andrew, and Karen are waiting for their fourth quadruplet Daniel to come home when they find themselves in a magical world where animals can talk and many races live together, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. The three find themselves drawn to talking animals and magical bracelets that give them power over the elements. But there is a deeper plot afoot. The three are followed by a dark rider and are forced onward by motives they can’t understand. But they will quickly discover that this new world has many wonders… and many dangers.

The Good

I feel like the author of had a very detailed world planned out in her head, and there were some very interesting facets therein. Most of the denizens of the world were called “speakers,” which meant they were sentient animals or humanoid species whose lifeforce was stored in heart jewels. Occasionally a human would venture into this world and would find that he or she had a heart friend, a resident of the world with no heart jewel whose lifeforce was bound to the human’s. Some of the humans were also Warriors of a particular element, who gained magical powers through bracelets and weapons specific to their powers. Humans were not well-liked in general, but they were not nearly so disliked and feared as the dragons.

The Bad

I can best describe Land of Myth as progressively harder to understand. I started out following it okay. Three siblings are getting ready to go to the movies, but their plans are interrupted when the area around their house turns into a mystical land. They hear someone call for help, so they decide to explore it.

What?

Oh. Yes, this was the comprehensible part.

Anyway, it’s all going good for a while. Lydia, Drew, and Karen meet some friendly (and unfriendly) birds and find magic bracelets. There is also a secret dark rider who attacks some mermaids. Fun times.

Then we start introducing the factions. There seem to be lots of different races of people in this world, few of whom are have English-congruent names like “elf.” I would have been okay with “light elves” and “dark elves” and “other elves,” or at least some solid translation of each of the factions into something I could remember, but in this hope, I was disappointed. So I think that I can at least start keeping track of which factions are good and evil, or at least aligned with our main characters. But it turns out that all of these factions are multi-faceted. Or involved in some crazy nine-sided war. And our main humans? Not so main. Less and less of the book is about them. And more and more of it is about various native denizens of the land, many of whom have oddly similar names.

Basically, by the time we find out the true identity of the dark rider, which is not nearly as much of a surprise as it thinks it is, I have totally given up trying to keep the factions straight. I persevered to the end, mostly because I would never review a novel without reading it in its entirety, and also hoping that the big reveal of what happened two years ago would make things make sense. Yeah, it didn’t. In fact, it introduced a load of other new characters and factions that we didn’t even know existed.  I think a lot of these things made sense in the author’s head but were just not adequately translated to paper.

The Romance

There is not any romance to speak of in Land of Myth. Karen apparently dated one of the bad guys two years ago, but she was fourteen and doesn’t remember it for most of the book, so how serious could it really have been? Poor quadruplets. Sixteen years old and not a date in sight.

Will I read more?

I gave Land of Myth my best try, and I couldn’t keep track of what was going on. So I feel like this equates to failing the intro class of a subject. I accept that this is just not going to be a me-friendly series and move on.

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