EYE OF THE MOONRAT (The Bowl Of Souls book 1)

Eye Of The Moonrat by Trevor H. Cooley
Book 1 of The Bowl Of Souls series
Read by James Foster
Genre: epic fantasy
Format: paperback & audiobook

About Eye Of The Moonrat:

Justan was raised on the outskirts of the Dremaldrian Battle Academy. He watched his father ascend the ranks within the academy to become one of the most respected warriors in the kingdom. The only thing he has ever wanted is to become an academy student and follow the path of his father. Unfortunately, only the best can enter the academy and Justan is a horrible fighter. Everyone tells him that he is more suited to scholarly work than swordplay. In desperation he hurls himself into training, eager to overcome the doubters and walk into the academy triumphant, unaware that secretive powers plot to disrupt his plans.

Meanwhile, an evil wizard of immense power is using magic to twist the bodies of the creatures of the land and transform them into monsters. With these creatures and the peoples of the wilds, he is building an army . . .

Ogres and dragons, warriors and wizards are destined to clash, their fates guided by The Bowl of Souls.

Eye of the Moonrat is book one of The Bowl of Souls series.

Source: Info in the About Eye Of The Moonrat was taken from GoodReads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15752127-eye-of-the-moonrat on 19/02/2017.

My Thoughts:

I like the way James Foster reads. The words are clear and distinct which brought the rating of this audiobook a couple of notches up!

When I first started reading/listening to this book, it seemed like this author is one of those who makes the characters act or be stupid to create a situation where they could save the world... a version of "too stupid to live" (TSTL) kind of writing style... Justan, our main protagonist, sounded like a know-it-all, obstinate learner. That didn't endear him to me at all... I wasn't enthralled, to say the least. However there was nothing better to read and the book was in my phone already so I continued listening to it. I was glad I did because as it turns out, Justan wasn't TSTL but just make mistakes like any of us does. It was annoying at first but it also made the character more real and enabled the reader to connect with story more firmly. However, the super-villain on the other hand is all evil which bears no semblance to reality and is so much like Dr. Evil in Austin Powers instead. The character is painted more of a parody of evil than a real evil. This has the effect of the story having a clear cut delineating line between good and evil. It follows that the plot is quite straight forward as well. A formulaic bad guys attack, good guys defend, and there ensues a fight between good and evil. Then the book ends in a cliffhanger. The end. However, the world building is good enough that I wanted to keep on reading. Kudos to the author for achieving that much! The only thing marring that world building is it's slight middle grade tone. In its portrayal of the evil villain, it gave this book a middle grade slant. I'm not a fan of this particular quirk. I was looking for a proper epic fantasy. In that score, I was a bit disappointed.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 4
Story itself = 3
Writing Style = 3.5
Ending = 2
World building = 4.5
Cover art = 4
Pace = 3
Plot = 3
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Bowl Of Souls Series:

The Author
	Since putting out his first book: Eye of the Moonrat in May of 2012, Trevor H. Cooley has sold over 200,000 copies of his books in ebook and audio formats. He was born in South Carolina and has lived all around the United states, including Utah, New Mexico, Michigan and Tennessee. His love of reading started in the second grade with Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series. He couldn’t get enough and continued with David Eddings, Tolkein, Robert Jordan, Stephen King, and many others. Since then, all he wanted was to become a published writer. The characters and concepts that eventually became the Bowl of Souls series started in his teens. He wrote short stories, kept notebooks full of ideas, and generally dreamed about the world constantly. There were several attempts at starting a novel over the years. Not long after he was married, his wife told him to stop talking about the story and write it down. Many years and rewrites and submissions and rejection letters later, he finally put the books on Amazon. In August of 2013 he quit his day job and started writing full time.
trevorhcooley.com | facebook | twitter | pinterest | google+ | goodreads | amazon

The Narrator
	James Foster was born in Björk’s house in Iceland and grew up on Easter Island, where his parents were giant stone heads. He has the ability to fire beams of tacos out of his hands and he can turn his legs into tigers. On Sundays, James enjoys reading Family Circus and traveling through time. His favorite color is greenish-transparent and his favorite movie is the one you just watched. James is in charge of uploading the staff bios to the website, and no one has checked over his work.
jamesnarrates.com | twitter | facebook | google+ | instagram | goodreads | linkedin | audible

FTC Disclosure:
This book was purchased with private funds.
No money received for this review.