{"id":597,"date":"2017-08-24T16:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T22:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=597"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:31:33","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:31:33","slug":"book-shadowguard-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/24\/book-shadowguard-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Shadowguard (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1444879609l\/27135865.jpg\" alt=\"Shadowguard\" width=\"267\" height=\"400\" \/>Shadowguard<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2015<br \/>\nAuthor: Gama Ray Martinez<br \/>\nLength: 228 pages<\/p>\n<p>I picked this book up for free on my Kindle recently, probably due to some promotion to heighten awareness of the latest book in the <em>Pharim War<\/em> series. As the first book in this series, <em>Shadowguard<\/em> doesn\u2019t waste any time getting down into the action of the story. Somewhat light on exposition and description, the world created here is still vibrant and fascinating, regardless. The story&#8217;s\u00a0characters and setting immediately immersed me in the world, and that&#8217;s not even mentioning the interesting magic system Gama Ray Martinez has created. It fell in line with the fantasy genre without being too derivative of it.<\/p>\n<p>Some may say a series of books about a magical boy learning magic at an illustrious school sounds a lot like the <em>Harry Potter<\/em> series. The fact that the <em>Pharim War<\/em> series has a fantasy world setting, and isn&#8217;t just a hidden part of our real world, makes it distinctly different from J.K. Rowling\u2019s wizards. Despite having only seen the <em>Harry Potter<\/em> movies, I almost prefer the \u201cwizardry school\u201d in the <em>Pharim War<\/em> series since it\u2019s on a friggin\u2019 volcano! The magic system does make a lot of sense in this book and even has it categorized into a set of different abilities.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the occasional proofreading error (about once a chapter), my only qualm was that the book was almost <em>too<\/em> concise. Knowing this was the first book in the series almost made me wonder if the main antagonist would be dealt with in this book or not. Granted, with a reasonably conclusive character arc, <em>Shadowguard<\/em> does not have an annoying, cliffhanger ending, but still has potential to explore the characters in the next installment. In fact, this book was so good I am heavily contemplating buying the rest of the series . . . especially since I now know it\u2019s been completed and I won\u2019t have to wait for future books to be released.<\/p>\n<p>An incredible, action-packed YA fantasy, I give <em>Shadowguard<\/em> 4.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h1><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shadowguard Year: 2015 Author: Gama Ray Martinez Length: 228 pages I picked this book up for free on my Kindle recently, probably due to some promotion to heighten awareness of the latest book in the Pharim War series. As the first book in this series, Shadowguard doesn\u2019t waste any time getting down into the action [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,54],"tags":[33,55,789,787,114,788,8,28,786,790,30],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-5-stars","category-book","tag-33","tag-book","tag-fantasy","tag-gama-ray-martinez","tag-magic","tag-pharim-war","tag-review","tag-series","tag-shadowguard","tag-ya","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}