You’ll have a hard time finding published work that’s more poorly done. Hardly a page went by that didn’t have a tired cliche, a wrongly used word, or a vague cookie-cutter description. Characters in children’s tales have more depth and nuance than these. I particularly found action scenes tedious, with every shot the good guy takes being perfect, and with impossible combat sequences. Countless times, he has the bad guy ‘lifting his sword’ (or hammer or dagger etc) ‘high in the air’ and beginning its downward descent and then tells us that ‘suddenly’ some sound happens and some other character appears in the scene in a way that would take many seconds but STILL manages to stop the fatal blow. Or there’s a bad guy right there mere feet from our hero and he attacks but SOMEHOW the hero manages to fend off the attack by pulling out his sling, loading a rock into it and swing it and throwing the rock. I’m not kidding. Characters are continually being gifted with omniscient knowledge or foreshadowing from the author that just comes to them as a ‘feeling’. Oh! And when the hero and his four or five friends get in a fight, they’re always ok. The only ones on his side who die are ‘guys he didn’t know’. I started imagining any unknown comrades as wearing red shirts. In short, this is just bad writing. It consistently reads as though it’s coming from a ten-year-old. It hasn’t got anything close to a mature sense of character, of narrative development or even of the basics of space and timing. I stuck with it for a few short books to see if it would improve, as there’s some imaginative promise there that a good editor might be able to coax out (with a lot of work), and I hoped it would improve. But I’ve gotten into the habit of talking back to the story in frustration (“no, he didn’t do that;” or “she already broke his nose, so no, she didn’t ‘break it again’!”) so I think it’s time to stop expecting it to get better. The only people who should read this series are those who wish to experience the thought, “Wow, I guess *I* could be a published writer!”

Great book!

My ratings are at the bottom of you don’t want to read this huge paragraph...with that over with let’s get started: I have read the first five books in this series (I’ve already begun the fifth) and I have enjoyed the thoroughly. The characterization and world building is great and that is where Morgan Rice’s strong points lie, but she falls a little short of writing a genuinely great book. There are typos very often and she uses the same adjectives to describe almost every situation. It just kind of feels lazy in the grand scheme when other fantasy writers have done so much better at describing scenes and combat. My next complaint comes from plot armor. This basically means that the main character(s) are protected by the writer and can never get hurt drastically or die. This occurs in a lot of novels I grant you, but this author puts her characters in constant situations they should not be able to get out of so it comes across as the plot being the only reason they are still alive. Thor’s powers are just too much like a deus ex machina (sry if I misspelled that) so it feels like they always come out of nowhere and save him and his friends. There are constant moments when a character is going to die and then is spontaneously saved by something. The romance plots are actually decent, but some are far too similar and I really dislike the whole ‘love at first sight trope’ which this author used in every relationship (I want to make it clear that love at first sight is not a horrible starting point at writing a relationship, but if it is the basis for it it comes across as not genuine. This is something this author actually does well because her characters like each other for their character traits not their looks). I know after all that criticism it seems like I hate them but trust me I like these books a lot. For all their flaws they make me care about the characters and that is hard to do. I just wish they had been edited and streamlined a bit more before being published. Here are my individual categories for rating these books. Characters: 9/10 very well written and mostly believable. You learn to love the protagonists and hate the antagonists. Granted most of the antagonists as very cliche. Story: 7/10 the overall story is cool and makes sense and gives you a sense of adventure while reading, but it makes much less sense in the fifth (mainly in Thor’s plot line) and things constantly happen suddenly (the author will say: “suddenly this, suddenly that.” Over and over again.) World building: 10/10 the best overall element. The world of the ring is interesting, mysterious, and thrilling. The world is built of quickly in the first few books and gradually grows as you read. Characters feel real repercussions of huge devastating events (death of king macgil etc.) the world doesn’t feel like ours at all which in a fantasy setting is a good thing. Overall writing: 7/10 there is huge potential in these books which is why it make me sad to see them in such a rough state after being published. They can easily be enjoyed as they are now, but they could have been written so much better. I will continue to read this series and I will put my final review on the last book. Thanks for reading, if you did... Z

Wipe those crocodile tears and man up

This has been an exciting series. However, due to the large number of editing errors, I can only give this book in the series 4 stars. Too often I had to reread sentences to figure out what the writer meant to say.

Its a good series that could use some more polishing but i have a major hatred right now with the author,either the 2nd or 3rd book is only avaliable by paying while all the others are free,so i ended up skipping a whole book.im not happy about that,now im still a little confused after i re read all the ones i have.

A story of good and evil, magical beings, love and hate, jealousy, life and death. I enjoyed reading this epic fantasy that continues on.

This was the first book I picked up from Mr Rice and I was at the edge of my seat from start to finish! Excellent detail, as you read you have no problem seeing it in your mind, I don't know what other people are looking for when they leave a bad review about Mr Rice. If there is anything I can say about it being bad is this,, It's Bad to the Bone!!!! I really like the way he writes a Good Book keep it coming Man!!!! Thumbs Up!!!

This would make a decent outline for a book, but should never have been published as it is. Imagine a comic book without the art or character development and this is what you would get.

Morgan rice is the author of the vampire journals and the sorcerers ring. She is an amazing writer, and her books catch the attention of many readers. I am currently reading the sorcerers ring, I cannot wait to find out what happens!