The Rise of the Ameedis

The Rise of the Ameedis

A Kaira Renn Prequel

R.A. Lindo

Kindle only, Mar 2019

97 pages

Fantasy

✬✬✬✬⭑

The cover is quite eye-catching with the electric blue and black and only the figure of whom I assume is Casper Renn, the terribly concerned father, still mourning husband, and defensively prepared son.

Casper Renn had lost his wife 10 years ago and is still deeply mourning her loss. He is raising his daughter, Kaira, with the help of his sister, Philomeena. His father, Isiah Renn, has turned to the dark side of magic and is at the top of the magic community’s list of most wanted criminals. He’s an extremely powerful wizard, as are all witches and wizards in his line. Both Casper and Philomeena are high in the magical community. Children are normally not brought into the community until they are eighteen. Given Isiah Renn’s troublemaking and the fact that Kaira is bound to be a powerful witch in her own right, Casper and Philomeena are anxious to bring her into the magical community early, even though she is only twelve. Her grandfather is likely to see her as a valuable prize and they want to protect her.

Not only do Casper and Philomeena have to keep watch on the bad guys outside the magic community, but they have also been warned about one of their own on the inside of the organization who might be going down the wrong path. Meyen Grayling is one of the other powerful witches in the Society. But Meyen is power hungry. She’s not satisfied being number three on the ladder. She definitely wants the number one position and resents the two Renns for being higher on the ladder and more powerful than she is. She resents having to spend any time taking care of her children as well. She has an eighteen-year-old son, Jacob, and his younger sister, Guppy. These are the two that we met in book one that was previously released, that tells more of Kaira’s story of actually entering the magic community. In this book, the prequel, we see how easy it was for Philomeena to show the two neglected children just a bit of attention and teach them some charms that they should have been learning anyway. After that they were dedicated to her and willing to help her in any way. Their mother had already alienated them with her lack of care and love.

The tension and pace weren’t what they were in book one, but it hit the high notes when it needed to. It was more sneaking behind scenes than pitched battles, though there was one of those towards the end. I sort of relaxed after Casper got the okay to induct Kaira into the Society, even though the confrontation with Erent Koll, the other major evil dark magic wizard, happened after that. For me, the focus had stayed on getting her inducted. Strange to use the Ameedis in the title of the book, I think. We run into them twice in the book. Once with Isiah and once with Koll. They each seem to travel with a cloud of them, like vampiric birds that screech and drive normal people mad. They didn’t seem so terribly horrific because you could get treatment if you acted quickly. And it seemed like some people could withstand them.

Well, the book was actually quite a good read and definitely sets you up to read book one, if you haven’t already. I think this will be a pretty good series. It does have those HP similarities in tone and feel for those that are looking for that sort of thing. I recommend the prequel and book one. And I’m waiting for book two to come out to find out where Kaira, Guppy, and Jacob get to with their magic abilities.