The story started out a little slow. Wilona's motivation seemed a little sudden and things seemed to come pretty easy for her. Not a bad story.

I wanted to like this book. I really did - the description sounds wonderful, the concept is that YA type that is popular right now, but I always enjoy the books. I couldn't even finish this book though. I've finally given up after over a week of reading one page and just giving up because I couldn't get through the story. The writing, while technically mistake free, is so choppy and short. I acknowledge that it is YA and isn't going to have massive sentence structures - but when every sentence is about 6/7 words, it chops the writing up so hard that I couldn't even enjoy what was going on. Which, there was little character development in the part I read. The main character cycles so quickly through emotions that you would think she was 13 and just starting puberty. Notwithstanding that her grandmother died, none of it was developed. She's entirely too quick to accept their explanations, questions nothing and goes from one sentence detesting having to take on her role to immediately embracing it and knowing she has to act the part with little explanation as to why. Great concept, poorly executed. I really don't have much more to say since I couldn't even finish it.

This book took some time for me to really get into it and enjoy it fully. The beginning felt a little rushed, but by the middle of the book the action started to pick up and the story became more intriguing.

Heir to Illaria follows a young girl, Wilona, who has had everything she's ever known essentially ripped away from her in the space of one day. She gets taken from her grandmother, her identity is not what she has always believed it to be, and her whole way of life changes.

This story is essentially a princess-in-hiding tale. This topic has been done a lot and sometimes it can be a little cliche, but I still enjoy it so I keep coming back to books with this type of description. The first part of the book which largely focuses on Wilona's discovery of her true identity and the subsequent lessons that follow this discovery, really felt rushed to me and not well fleshed out. I didn't find myself getting attached to her character until midway through the whole book. I think a large part of what bothered me comes back to her love interest and the way this relationship forms. It felt way too rushed and not genuine at all, even later on in the book I still just wasn't believing the love interest.

That being said, my favorite part of this book were the magical elements that the author added into it. Once I started to find out more about magic and how it functions in Wilona's world, the story really became more interesting. I loved that the antagonist was a necromancer and utilized this skill to rule his kingdom, it definitely gave him a creepier edge. I liked that the author chose to add in more elements of other character's stories towards the end, that piqued my interest and made me want to see what happens in the rest of the series.

Overall, I think this book had a slow start but ultimately shows promise as a series. I would like to see more of the world of Illaria and the other kingdoms surrounding it and hopefully that will happen in the next book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Illaria Publishing for providing me this “ARC” in return for my honest review.

This is the first book in the Illaria series by Dyan Chick.

We start out the book with our main character Wilona venturing into the woods to pick berries, even though her grandmother doesn’t like it when she goes out that far on her own. Everything is going fine until she hears horses, and turns and sees the King’s Guard, or part of it anyway, riding down the road. She is frightened immediately; The Necromancer King is evil and known for having vicious and cruel guards. She tries to hide but she’s too late, and the guards confront her. They see she is carrying a knife for protection and tell her that it’s punishable by death to hunt for animals in the King’s woods, even though that’s obviously not what she was doing. She tries to reassure them, and she thinks she succeeds. She runs home and tells her grandmother what happened, and as her grandma starts to talk with her the guards break into her home, killing her grandmother. They would have killed her but she was protected by a woman named Saffron, who says she is part of a group of people bound to protect her. She has no idea why anyone would protect her, and honestly, what did she need protecting from? She’s just a normal girl.

Soon Wilona leaves with Saffron and they are headed to a friend of Saffron’s house. Wilona and Saffron encounter King’s Guard’s cruelty along the way, and Wilona wonders why no one tries to stop the King from doing these things.

“The King’s Gaurd doesn’t need a reason. They just enjoy killing. Most of the people in the larger
towns live in a constant state of fear.” She said.

My jaw clenched. This shouldn’t be happening. “Why doesn’t anybody do anything?”

Saffron glanced at me, the ghost of a smile on her mouth, then turned away.

It’s clear that Saffron knows something Wilona doesn’t, and when they arrive at Lady Genevieve’s house she finds out what it is.

"I looked at the symbol on my necklace and then back at the symbols covering the tapestry.
The Ouroboros engraved on the charm seemed to glow. It was the same symbol. I dropped it
as if it had burned me. Why am I wearing a royal crest around my neck?

Anything related to the previous king was considered treason. That’s why this symbol was
illegal. I could be hung for wearing this."

She finds out that she was the daughter to the old king, and the only one to escape the slaughter when the new king took over the country by force. That her real name isn’t even Wilona, it’s Elisabetta, Etta for short. She is the only one, seemingly, who can rightfully rule the country, and that is why the king wants to kill her. She decides she wants to help their cause, but makes it clear that she doesn’t want to rule if the time ever comes. She is meant to be a political tool to make alliances with other countries. So she takes her “princess lessons” as she calls them, and they move on their way to the next part of her lessons, world history and politics.

On the way their carriage is stopped by a King’s Guard, and there’s too many for Saffron to handle, and Etta has to kill a person for the first time. When they arrive at Sir Henry’s house, he teaches her all he can and gives her a very foreboding warning: Do not trust anyone. After Sir Henry’s they move on to the main resistance camp; the “resistance” is called The White Ravens. This is where she meets Max, the leader of the White Ravens, and apparently, her brother. Etta starts to train with weapons whenever she can, and develop her magic, but he’s determined to marry her off to another country for political alliance, and Etta is not happy with that. She tries to develop her magic as much as possible to hopefully convince her brother not to send her away.

She keeps getting a really bad feeling about her brother but she tries to ignore it. He seems very power hungry to her, and determined to do whatever he wants to be King. Meanwhile, while she practices she gets closer and closer to Ashton, Max’s apprentice, who is studying to become a sorcerer himself. Even though they know it could never be, Etta falls in love with Ashton. He is the only one, besides Saffron, who knows about her water affinity, the most rare magic affinity in this world. Affinities run in families is what she is told, and she finds out her father had the same affinity she does.

The whole book kind of takes off from there, telling the story of going up against the King, and the choice Etta makes when she learns something huge about her brother.

Likes:

--> Etta. Her whole character is just amazingly well-written. I liked that she wasn’t just auto-ready to rule an entire country. A lot of YA will do that secret princess trope and write it to where they didn’t know they were a princess, but they’re ready to rule a country when they find out. I liked Etta’s story-line, it felt very organic. I liked that she made her own choices and stood up to her brother when she had to, and that she made the right choice in the end when she learned a big secret.
--> Etta’s magic. It was so cool the way she took down those reapers. I LOVED the arctic fire concept it was AMAZING!
--> The LOVE in this book. I hated Max, but I loved Saffron and I felt really bad for her. Etta and Ashton were a thing of beauty. I adore “i hate you but come to love you” trope-y love stories. While it is a trope, it was written well, and I don’t mind them to begin with.
--> I loved the whole entire part where she was at the Sorcerer Trials with Ashton. It was so interesting to see the magic, and watch Etta make yet another ally and learn how to do some spells. I also liked the little bit of jealousy we get to see from Etta 🙂
--> I read the entire book in one sitting. While it did have minor issues when it came to being either rushed or dragged out at times, it kept me entertained. I am definitely reading the rest of the series.

Disliked:

--> The beginning of the book, up until Sir Henry’s house, felt kind of rushed to me. I think that Dyan could have spent more time developing that part of the story. A lot of the story kind of feels like it has weird pacing.
--> Poor Saffron getting played

four-star-rating

The book lost one star for pacing, and trope-y story elements but overall this was a fantastic story and I would definitely recommend it to people who like YA, Fantasy, lost-princess-tropes and female protagonists with a backbone.

It didn't take me long to start enjoying HEIR OF ILLARIA and the characters quickly grew on me, but there were a few things that kept book one in the Illaria series from being a total hit for me.

Wilona was easy to like. She was raised to think she was just a normal girl and ends up finding out that she is actually a princess and the true heir to the throne. Wilona is a bit naive and very innocent, but she grows from weak to strong from start to finish of the story.

Although we have seen the whole 'normal girl is really royalty' storyline before, I still enjoyed the plot of HEIR OF ILLARIA. I enjoyed the progress that both the story and the characters made and I also enjoyed the world that everything took place in.

Now for the not so awesome parts. I found the romance a bit lackluster. It was missing the zing I look for in a romance. There is definitely room for that zing to grow, but so far I'm missing it. Another thing was the pace. For most of the book the pace was great, but there were times that it went a little too fast and I felt like the details just weren't there. These issues weren't huge enough to ruin the story, but they were worth mentioning.

I definitely enjoyed HEIR OF ILLARIA enough to want to find out what would happen next for Wilona and the rest of her allies in book two, ORACLE OF ILLARIA.

I gave it 3.5/5 stars

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I'll be honest, I gave this a good go. I was interested in the premise, though the summary sounded more like a cheesy TV opening summary than a book summary, but within the first few pages it was clear this was not the book for me. The pacing was wonky, very rushed, and not enough explanation was given for any characters' motivations. If we're to believe that the MC would follow a woman she's never met before after being attacked then we need to see how desperate she is to learn more about her pendant, so that a woman showing her the same symbol would spark her curiosity. But we weren't given that, which makes it hard for me to believe that she'd hop on a horse and ride for hours with a stranger for no reason.

The dialogue was awkward too, and I just didn't get a sense of any of the characters' personalities.

Wanted to like this, but couldn't finish it.

I went into this looking for a light YA fantasy novel, and to a certain extent it fulfilled this criteria. However, I really struggled feeling any kind of emotional tug whatsoever about this story, whether one way or another.

Wilona has been raised alone by her grandmother her whole life, segregated from the nearby village and believing her parents are dead. Until one evening, while picking berries, she's interrupted by guards - an event which will trigger an adventure to self discovery, and the downfall of a tyrannical ruler.

I found the writing itself rather simplistic, and the world building itself was extremely lacking in places. It's implicated that there are several different lands or continents - Winona's mother is from a different country, however most of them are never elaborated on, which I felt was a missed opportunity. We are also never really given a greater explanation to the magic system used within the world, and I felt. A little more time spent explaining things would have been beneficial.

The pacing was good, and we are quickly swept into the action. However, I felt this came at a detriment to the story at times. After just a couple of pages of introduction, we are meant to be so invested in these characters already (for example Saffron) that when they bare their soul, and speak about the horrific deeds the Necromancer king has done to them and their families, we're suppose to care. Without any real emotional depth and understanding, and a lengthier understanding of previous events, I felt I couldn't really bring myself to be that bothered.

As a main character, Wilona was able to carry the plot well. However, I had issues with her ability to just mindlessly accept everything she is told and reach the same conclusions as complete strangers after one conversation. The plot itself was also very similar to other fantasy novels - including the romance element, which came across as very cliched. As with all fantasy novels of late, this suffers the same fate as other 'trilogies' in that there also wasn't any definitive conclusion. As stated before in reviews, this is a major bugbear of mine.

That all said, this was still an entertaining read which managed to keep me engaged enough to read to the end. I'll possibly pick up the sequel.

I really, really wanted to like this one but it fell short for me. The story had a lot of promise but there were some issues I had with the editing and they kept pulling me out of the story. The pacing was also a pain point for me as there were parts that dragged for me and other parts where I felt like I missed something.

I did like the characters and thought between the king, the White Ravens, and Wilona, there is a great story here. I might check out the next book just to see what happens next but we'll see.

Heir of Illaria is a fresh take on the traditional fantasy scene and definitely worth a read!

Heir of Illaria absorbs the reader and they can easily lose track of time while reading as so much happens in this one book. It has all the elements of a great fantasy, strong female lead, sorcery, a little bit of romance and of course political intrigue.

Wilona is a strongly likable character whose insight into a world she didn't know she belonged in helps the reader understand what has happened in Illaria and everything is revealed at Wilona's pace.

The one downfall of the book is that it is quite similar in plot to other fantasy books but the unique way the writer creates the story negates this and it makes for a very positive reading experience.

I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a fast paced fantasy with a bit of romance on the side.

*ARC received from publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

Greetings, I trust you have all had a good week. I was wondering, based on the weather, if we had fast forwarded to November. It was pelting down with rain, freezing cold and windy for the early part of this week. Normally, that makes me want to cuddle up with a good book. The books I have tell you about this week were a bit mixed. I mentioned last week I am part of the beta review group for Michael J. Sullivan's newest instalment in the First Empire series. Time flew when I was reading it, but alas I can't tell you what I thought about it. So what else did I read to take my mind off the weather?
The Heir of Illaria is Dyan Chick's first instalment of the series of the same name. Young Wilona discovers that everything she thought she knew turned out to be a lie. Rather than being a poor orphan living with her grandmother it turns out that she is none other than the Princess of Illaria. She has been hidden from the Necromancer King who killed her family. With the help of the clandestine organisation the White Ravens, Wilona's mission now is to defeat the King and restore her family to the throne.

I haven't read youth fiction for awhile and thought I would give Heir of Illaria a go. I also loved the cover. I was quite disappointed with the story however. While I thought the premise of the necromancer king was a good one the story itself was very predictable. In fact, I guessed many of the things that happened in the story. I believe this would be a good book for young readers, especially those who are new to fantasy.

TWO WORDS: WHAT HAPPEN?!?!?!?! Sometime I do wish I was a princess. Lol. The writing for this book was well and the cover was well made. I love when authors comes with awesome covers and very catchy book titles.

3.5 stars!
I am usually not one to reach for fantasy novels but I am certainly glad that I found this title. I loved that readers were immediately thrown into the story at an interesting and face-paced time in the storyline and I thought that the plot line was very unique.
Personally, I felt that I was a bit disconnected from a few of the characters in the storyline. While we were introduced and given a little bit of background information about them, I felt that it wasn't enough to help me truly relate to them.
Overall, I really enjoyed this read!

<b>Rating:</b> 3 stars

<i>Heir of Illaria</i> is everything you can expect from a YA fantasy book. In a new, unique fantasy world, our female protagonist has always lived her life as a normal villager until a certain event. She turns into this special snowflake and has to save the world. Oh, and of course a love interest appears as well. We can't forget the romance.

I personally am a sucker for clicheness (sometimes), which is why I <i>did</i> enjoy this first installment. However, I can see lots of people becoming annoyed while reading this book because of the predictability of the storyline.
Moreover, the characters and romance weren't the best written ones but frankly, I could oversee its flaws and still enjoy reading about them.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read but it was nothing special.