Summary
The sweat pours from his brow…as Iggy forges a sword from a meteorite.
Will it be the weapon to save them?
As the evil and obsessed Emperor Mallak plans to kill Iggy for his crystal amulet, Iggy is distracted by Raraesa. His crush makes it hard to focus, but he’s becoming a master smith. With that comes the muscles that will make him a great fighter, too.
There’s just one problem. A dark wizard, a Death Knight, and five thousand soldiers have been tasked with hunting him down.
Where will he hide?
The mysteries of the Nostaw Warrior still haunt Iggy. There must be a reason he was given the sword and he prays it will help him return to his place and time, but Pennsylvania seems far off.
Is the answer on the Island of Cambria?
My Thoughts
The plot of Ignatius and the Battle at Dinas Affaraon is somewhat slow, but you are hooked wanting to know how things will work out. I loved this story, if you set aside the editing. More on that later.
I loved Ignatius and the Swords of Nostaw, which was the first book and debut of D.A. Mucci which I was lucky enough to get a copy via NetGalley to review. I couldn’t wait to read Ignatius and the Battle at Dinas Affaraon. The characters are lovable.
One of my favorites is actually Madam Trinity. She is a seemingly crazy older lady, and wants what she wants. In Ignatius and the Battle at Dinas Affaraon she plays a larger role than she was in the first book which made me happy. Madam Trinity adds some comical relief. There is a moment when she is talking to Iggy and Medyr, who is a Dwarf and just wants to get back to his cave. Medyr is putting up a bit of a tantrum so Madam Trinity says “Medyr, put a cork in it, pull up your big boy socks, and come with us.” Something about the Dwarves in this world is they apparently need to change their socks daily with clean socks with crazy designs and colors on them.
The plot feels slow, but I was expecting that from the first book. We are on an adventure to save the Kingdom, and overthrow an bad ruler, but we move from place to place and usually stay to take care of a few things while there. Like when a few of the characters go to Dinas Affaraon. The point of going to Dinas Affaraon is to teach Iggy how to use Rune magic. While in these places there isn’t a whole lot of tension which can make things feel like they are dragging.
Even more of a drag though, was the editing. Most of my notes in this book wasn’t highlighting great lines. Instead the bulk of my notes were regarding needed edits. Wrong word form, missing words, character names misspelled, wrong character name used, all these left me wondering if the wrong version of the book was uploaded to Amazon. This was easily the worst editing I’ve seen in a published book. I should have been able to quickly finish this book, but when I am constantly re-reading things to make sense of what I just read, the flow of the story is interrupted and I was then distracted and pulled to scroll YouTube or check out Instagram instead.
The editing was easily the big drag on this book. I could only give this 3.5 stars because the errors just kept killing the joy and flow of the book. I also have a minor issue with how a piece at the end was accomplished. The way it was written felt more like the author was just having fun playing a game with the characters, and the short scenes involved really weren’t needed. To prevent spoilers, I’m just going to say something happens to re-unite some characters we had separated from towards the beginning of our journey.