RFAK No. 11, The Dragon Orb, by Mike Shelton

The Dragon Orb, by Mike Shelton, 326 pages.

Some books are a slow burn – which is why I rarely stop reading a book, even if the beginning is a bit iffy.

That’s the case with Mike Shelton’s The Dragon Orb, a book that starts out with a klunk (with some wonky writing) but ends with a flourish of storytelling that made me glad I didn’t give up.

A few of the characters are a bit too perfect, but that’s okay.

The writing, especially at the beginning, is stilted, but that’s okay.

Why okay? Because the story pulled me through. As I read I began forming visions in my head of what the characters looked like, and began placing them in bits of geography I’ve visited as Shelton told his story. To me, that’s a sign of a good book.

I think part of the klunk came from the king-men and other vocabulary borrowed from the Book of Mormon. Not that it’s terrible the author did that, but the familiarity had my head hollering “B of M” every time it came up. Nevertheless, I got used to seeing such wording in the book, so that passed. To anyone not familiar with the borrowed vocabulary or concepts, there won’t be an issue.

Shelton’s characters are prefab, and we only get to see one of them grow as the story progresses. The rest are driven by the narrative and the (obvious) roles they’ll play in future novels. Shelton suffers the same characterization affliction I do – his characters pretty much sound the same.

The book might win the award for Least Likely Poisoning – I’m not sure anyone could successfully lunge up to someone and force them to drink out of a little glass bottle without the victim vigorously fighting back and succeeding. But I’m not a poisoning expert.