Stone Ram

**

2 Stars/5

Thanks to T A Uner for giving me this book to review.

When the holy artefact, the Golden Mane, is stolen from the kingdom of Rek, blind shepherd boy Fabian SilverSword goes on the gold quest to revive it from the Blood Reaper. Along with his new allies, Lager, an exiled Starfighter from Earth, Marella, a mysterious stealer from Pazland and Matilda, his loyal dog.  Fabian and the others must navigate the dangerous lawless domain of the Darklands and unknown dangers of the Hellion Doors, but will they be able to complete their quest.

The Stone Ram is an OK YA adventure novel, with a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy. It is not the fasted paced book and had a bit too much info dumping. However, I did remind me a bit of the Fable video games, especially with the Hellion Doors.

I did not like Fabian, as he was meant to be the stereotypical farm boy who turns into a hero, but he was too much wanting to be a hero, no matter what it costs others. Also I was confused with him, as even when Fabian was not able to see, it came across that he could. I liked Marella as she was street wise, courageous and quick. Lager is a drunkard from earth who is wise and wants to help Fabian.

I am guessing that is you have read the other books in this series the ending probably makes sense, but if you are reading this book as a standalone, the ending was very confusing and comes out of nowhere. I would recommend The Stone Ram to fans of the Leopard King Saga.