Dragonlinks

Paul Collins

Jelindel’s family has been murdered, and she is just struggling to survive out in the real world. Throw in a thief and a warrior consumed with honour, and you find that they make an incredible team.Which is good, because they’re trying to hunt down missing links of a chain mail shirt in order to destroy it forever.

The characters are fleshed out nicely, and I was able to empathise with them. The only complaint I continue to have is that the characters don’t really show much growth – particularly Jelindel’s sidekicks. Even Jelindel herself doesn’t change much, except to be more plucky.

Something I truly respect about Jelindel is her search for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I couldn’t understand why she just didn’t take all the skills from the dragon links! More skills are never a bad thing. Even if she didn’t use the powers (which wouldn’t seem very honourable), they would still be useful to have waiting around. That might have made the following books more exciting in terms of her abilities. Simple binding words get way too much importance – or maybe that the simplest things in life work best.

The plot is quite straightforward, but there are some diversions from the set path that you can’t begin to predict. My partner had trouble getting into it, she’s a slow reader. She commented the beginning was quite slow. I like the beginning! But I’ve always enjoyed simple things like learning lessons and working in an everyday life just for a change.

I have reread this series more than once over the years, but obviously not for 3+ years now! I would choose it as an excellent novel for reluctant female readers, or to a beginning fantasy reader.