Tale of Onora - Epic Fantasy of Awesomeness! :D

Hey guys! :D Happy New Year!

Joe here with another review for you all! (I’m on a roll at the moment haha!)



Today’s review is going to be on an Epic Fantasy book called ‘The Tale of Onora: The Boy and The Peddler of Death’ by Dylan Saccoccio.

Here’s a bit of the blurb for you all J
The Tale of Onora follows the journey of a young orphan after his village is destroyed and he is forced to grow up in a dangerous world. As he navigates through different walks of life, he begins to uncover a conspiracy as to why his village was destroyed. Before he can put the pieces together, his fate is sealed by a terrible war. In the storm of chaos that follows, his actions turn him into a legendary hero. The more renowned he gets, the closer the source of evil is drawn to him

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I was sent a copy of this book by the author for an honest review; but even if the author decided not to send me a copy, I would’ve forwardly accepted buying a copy, as this book did not fail to live up to the many other 5-star reviews it already has.

OhMyGod. This book was pretty much, literally perfect. The words and sentences throughout the whole book were written so beautifully and so fluidly that putting down the book or to stop reading was un-acceptable; the book called to me to read more and I did.

The first half of the book (which is made up of a prologue and two chapters) sets the scene of the world that the book envelops.
We are introduced to a world full of different races; different magical species, different landscapes and one un-kind flow of destiny that inter-connects the entire world together.

The main focus of the story is set on A Man and A Boy having a conversation; we do not know these peoples names as they are not mentioned; but these characters seem to have quite the impact without having a simple relatable signature for us readers to identify them by; which I liked very much.

The Man wants The Boy to see what has happened in his past and advises him to chose a chalice from his mantle-piece, The Boy chose’s a chalice which is infused with Shadowlight, a special sort of aether in this world. When The Boy drinks from the chalice he is transported back in time but only via memory.

What the boy begins to witness is the start of The Great War, a war that happened decades before his birth; a war which changed the face of the world forever; when the world was a battleground for the Oussanean’s and the Caliphan.

This first half of this book was amazing; it was full of beautiful sentences which really-really allowed for an in-depth imaginative building of the world and a great creative depth for us readers.

The way the characters were portrayed throughout the Prologue and the first Two Chapters was really well done and I don’t believe that I have been so intrigued and so excited about two characters without names before… so that was a fresh new feeling :)

The second half of the book, which just consisted of Chapter 3, was pretty good; I enjoyed it just as much as the first half, but there was one main problem I endured all of the way through.

The problem is that the plot is literally the exact same plot as The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I’ll do a little list explaining the differences and similarities, that I noticed.

The differences being:

·      The names of the characters.

·      The names of the species and the types of species.

·      The names of the areas.

The similarities being:

·      Forest Children with Fairies as their guardians.

·      A wind instrument called a Xun (The stand-in for the Ocarina)

·      The main character Aithein’s dreams are the same as Link’s

·      The evil guy holds his fist up to show a triangle shaped sigil glowing on his hand, which is then put into more descriptive detail, including that there are two other triangles which can be harnessed either individually or all together…

·      And two side-characters; one having to clean rocks out of a front lawn and another character guarding a tunnel saying that people can only leave the forest if they have a sword and shield… I love it though. :D

Now, don’t get me wrong, this did not destroy the story at-all. The story itself was crisp, fresh and beautifully descriptive; but every-time I went to imagine these characters I would think of the LOZ counterparts. For example: In LOZ Link’s fairy is called Navi, in this book Aithein’s fairy is called Dani…
I could not shake the thoughts of the game or the games story line being made into book form…

I even showed my little Brother who is a bigger Nintendo-fan than I am, and even he picked all of the same similarities and other ones out that I had missed…

Though, it did say in the product description box on Amazon that ‘if you’re a fan of The Legend of Zelda you’ll be a fan of this’
I didn’t think it meant literally though…

It could just be that I’m thinking too much of LOZ (As LOZ is possibly one of my favourite game series of all time) when I read parts of this story though… meh.

The ending was perfect though haha! I love The Man and his attitude towards The Boy; how he can be so cold and distant but all the while still be so loving and open, it's great!

Overall, I loved this book and I am very gracious, happy and grateful that the author (Dylan Saccoccio) sent me a copy to review. Thank you!
Check him out on Amazon and Goodreads if you fancy checking his stuff out!

Thank you all for reading this review and I hope you have a Happy New Year!
Joe :)