Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Honestly Mr. RICE should be ashamed of himself for the 2nd &3rd book here. He is milking this for every penny he can get. These books are pathetically short and even what story is here lacks depth and substance. Entire events are skipped just to move time fwd and impossible situations are created to create drama. The main characters do stupid things that make NO SENSE given their personality, background and supposed intelligence. Example w spoiler: The usurper brother who conspires for the thrown, kills the king and then tries to eliminate his rival siblings attempts stupid attacks, in public and when the attempts fail the siblings do NOTHING with the information. No reporting it even though there is an obvious judicial system and those council members despise the usurper and could have him deposed with evidence. The guards, army and castle staff all hate the murdering king and would act against their orders with the evidence but the siblings simply refuse to protect themselves against future attempts to kill them off, don't get protection for their key witness against Gareth (the murdering usurper) and still don't even get a statement from the witness.... it's like they just think "I know our brother is evil and devious and has tried to kill us off and certainly will again if he knows we're ON to his murder but everyone just go home and let's meet up later to expose him and have him arrested". The MAIN character, Thor, is in the army training but their "training for Knighthood" consists of actually throwing them is a heavily deadly monster infested ocean and by luck IF they survive this they can start their training where even more deadly beasts and warrior will attempt to kill these untrained kids and again, IF THEY HAPPEN TO SURVIVE, they can continue training. The final testing is was so out of character and so thoughtless and stupid I started wondering if a 3rd grader was ghost writing this.... spoiler example: these Knights in training have a code it's better to die with honour than to sink to the enemy level and live. Yet their final test was to STEAL a shelter from a Dragon whose FOOTPRINT is several hundred feet deep... whose teeth are the size of a house! So these KIDS are to STEAL something that doesn't belong to them for no reason given (this shelter is symbolic only, it's not to save a princess or other honorable thing) from a Dragon so big and deadly that no army has or could kill these last several thousand years this TESTING has been going on. You only make it into the Legion and pass the testing if u are, yet again, lucky enough to survive AND STEAL this shelter which has obviously never been taken before but miraculously KIDS pass the test every year and the Legion is centuries old. wow I say...gizmo jumps the shark on a skateboard in this book. Lastly the other main character, the druid magician Argon, who is centuries old and both lives near the castle AND is an advisor to the well loved and honorable previous king as well as one of his trusted 12 council members does NOTHING AND SAYS NOTHING to anyone even though he knew the kings son was going to going to kill his father to take the thrown..... and he still does NOTHING after the king is murdered and the usurper is on the thrown.... but the author offers no reason for the glaring plot holes. I am a voracious reader. I'm not hard to please and read 2 or 3 books a week, especially when they are this short, but this is the most amateurish writing I've seen since I was in 2nd grade. I'm embarrassed I actually paid for this book but I'm more embarrassed for this author that he has no problem being so lazy in his writing and offering his fans so little for their hard earned money.