Name: Adeline's review of ILLBORN by Daniel T. Jackson
Item: ILLBORN
Rating: 5
Author: Adeline

Daniel T. Jackson

BOOK ONE OF THE ILLBORN SAGA Long ago, The Lord Aiduel emerged from the deserts of the Holy Land, possessed with divine powers. He used these to forcibly unite the peoples of Angall, before His ascension to heaven. Over eight hundred years later, in a medieval world which is threatened by war and religious persecution, four young men and women begin to develop supernatural abilities. These forbidden and secret powers will shatter the lives that they have known, and will force each of them to confront the mystery of the ethereal Gate which haunts their dreams. What does the dream mean, and how is it connected to their burgeoning abilities? As they experience conflict, love, lust and betrayal, in lands which are being overtaken by war, they must try to stay ahead of and to survive the sinister forces which are now pursuing them. For they are being hunted… Illborn is Daniel T. Jackson’s powerful and gritty debut novel, and is the thrilling opening chapter in the epic fantasy story of The Illborn Saga.

ILLBORN

Zoul

Adeline

Illborn is definitely an entertaining and engaging fantasy, with a plot designed to shock you. Other than that, it needs no introduction and is a book I recommend going in blind to to feel the full effects of the adventure it leads you along.

The four POVs all follow their own separate adventure. Despite knowing the connection early on, their paths don't cross until much later in the book, with one never interacting with the others. This, of course, meant that I felt more drawn to particular POVs over the others. It's just my preference and not really anything against the characters and the journey they go on, with the exception of Corin's as he felt a little disjointed from the others being completely isolated from them throughout the book.

I would have preferred to know more about what it actually means to be Illborn and where it originated from, but I guess this will be developed as the series continues. This not being addressed until the closing chapter did make the book feel a little like a very long and drawn-out prologue for the series. It was not necessarily a bad thing, as it gave it the feel of a new epic series.

You can definitely feel the authors love of the fantasy genre throughout the writing, which was fantastic! The writing really developed as I progressed through, and I felt deeply drawn in by it.

The ending was the best part, and it gave me all the intrigue and inspiration to not hesitate too long before picking up the sequel.

Victoria Justice

Illborn is definitely an entertaining and engaging fantasy, with a plot designed to shock you. Other than that, it needs no introduction and is a book I recommend going in blind to to feel the full effects of the adventure it leads you along.

The four POVs all follow their own separate adventure. Despite knowing the connection early on, their paths don't cross until much later in the book, with one never interacting with the others. This, of course, meant that I felt more drawn to particular POVs over the others. It's just my preference and not really anything against the characters and the journey they go on, with the exception of Corin's as he felt a little disjointed from the others being completely isolated from them throughout the book.

I would have preferred to know more about what it actually means to be Illborn and where it originated from, but I guess this will be developed as the series continues. This not being addressed until the closing chapter did make the book feel a little like a very long and drawn-out prologue for the series. It was not necessarily a bad thing, as it gave it the feel of a new epic series.

You can definitely feel the authors love of the fantasy genre throughout the writing, which was fantastic! The writing really developed as I progressed through, and I felt deeply drawn in by it.

The ending was the best part, and it gave me all the intrigue and inspiration to not hesitate too long before picking up the sequel.

Sade A

I feel like i entered some weird twilight zone because this cannot be the book that has been garnering so much hype. My brain is rejecting this. Do i blame SPFBO for this?
Buuuuuuuttt on the other hand....You know what? I have to applaud this book for redefining what mediocre is. The power of a ton of people pushing a book can never be underestimated. You wonder how basic books continue to flourish and you know what? I get it now. Organic publicity is fucking powerful. Props to this book.

At this point, i'm wondering why people rag on SJM, because if this is 5 star material then SJM deserves all the praise and non of the hate.

🖤🖤
Alright... so this book is 4 people. Four otherwise maybe ordinary people. We don't know how but they get powers. 
Bryce 2.0 Alanna is this beautiful girl (with breasts. I just realised this author really only talks about Alanna in sex ways to be fair though she has sexpot powers so no choice i guess) who has lived in a world where sex is being traded so obviously, she gets the sexpot power. Cos you know seduction is super powerful and can influence any man to bend to your will except you're gay or a woman in which case you can pour your negative feelings into them. You have to love a power to finds balance for all genders and sexual orientation.

Leanna, this pious I want to serve Lord Aiduel character, who is probably personally responsible for pushing the "Lord Aiduel" word count up to 159 in this book, is blessed with the.... I guess, empath and healing powers?? cos you know "god” or whoever is in the business of dumping out these powers is really in the business of healing. Like it's one of the basic tenets of spiritual things. You need to be able to heal people if you're going to claim power of Jesus or Lord Aiduel in this case.

Arion is the tough guy so obviously gets the tough guy thing of being able to like really kill people 🤔, i guess. He gets like really focused with the killing and kills them well. Oh, also apparently, he can dream about the future.

"Lord Aiduel please grant me the wisdom and patience to always do unto others, as the kind people here have done unto me"

And then there's Corin who is super meek and bullied by his family and called a Runt (I think the name explains itself). He gets Fitz power but with more force and extended to humans. Pretty cool though.

"Lord Aiduel, please forgive me for my dishonest words of certainty when i am so suddenly full of doubt and confusion"

So this book follows this characters against the backdrop of the medieval European Christian Church running things as each of them go and do their own thing, such as: 
❗break an engagement, 
❗go to the convent
❗live in the convent 
❗Take lessons on how to be a better soldier 
❗make enemies who are obviously going to make your life hell in book 2 but i digress
❗get betrothed to a girl 
❗get banished from their village
❗live in woods for 2 years 
❗subjugate a bad ass animal (Hi Fitz 2.0)
❗evade religious fanatics by literally staying in-doors
❗kill religious fanatics (omg my powers are like powers 2.0 all the men want me. Bryce 2.0) 
❗travel to war 
❗Lord Aiduel protect me and give me wisdom
❗talk, have sex, meet, separate, get turned into a bitch.
in the most boring and mundane ways.. Like holy fuck these characters were just existing in the most boring way possible.....

Also totally random: but who the fuck is running from their past and a crime and doesn't think to completely change their name and appearance or keep a low profile??? Like is this not basic running away from my past and hiding in plain sight etiquette? Do you have to be a genius to figure that out?

There's a couple of pages that shows the politicking in the church. But as we all know the with the history of the church's leadership in medieval Europe, the church is always being run by a greedy bastard who favours one side over another because money and power was all the Church was about in those days. 
🖤🖤🖤
All in all, this is your regular run of the mill fantasy book with a side of people acting crazy because religion power trips.... Because you know that always gets a rise out of people and brings absolutely nothing but basic to the table.
Anyways, 2 STARS from me. I suggest you just go read the sordid history of the church in Europe but awwwwn no superpowers. Bummer😔

Deborah Kerr

So any self-pubbed/indie pinned author is going to automatically get a higher rating just because that is just so massively impressively, & in this house, we support indie/self-pinned authors.

That being said, there are things I loved about Illborn and things that didn’t work for me.

Things I loved:
- the world is great
-the nuanced politics and religious dynamics were intriguing as hell
- Leanna and Arian had pretty solid arcs and were interesting characters that grew 
- Ciron is my cinnamon roll and I love him
- the ending was PHENOMENAL
- for a chonky book, the pacing was pretty solid

Things that didn’t work for me:
- Allana as a character overall and the way her arc was written. Truly a case of “everything on this page tells me a man wrote this female character”— a few more female beta readers/editing friends should help tweak this
- from all of the hype I’ve heard about how AMAZING this book was the writing was not where I expected it to be. I’m talking specifically about sentences structure and linguistics. The majority of the book is okay, there are chunks that are fantastic, and then there are just some truly painfully bad sentences.
- a lot more telling than showing
- why in the world are characters in a high fantasy world saying “what’s up?” 

Absolutely worth the read and I’m excited to see how Jackson continues the series and grows as an author!

Samantha

I am keeping this 100% spoiler free because I think this is a book that fantasy lovers definitely need to read. I picked up this book because I had been following the author on social media for a while and wanted to read it the moment I had an opening in my reading schedule and I wanted to be able to take my time with it. While its thickness may appear daunting, it was an easy read that maintained good pacing throughout, without any moment that dragged on unnecessarily. I was hooked right from the prologue 

The character and world building was incredibly done, and while I normally don't prefer a multiple POV writing method, Daniel pulled it off fluidly allowing all characters to be well developed and as readers, we get to see their individual storylines come to life. I found myself fully immersed in each character's story without any of them feeling less important than the others. 

This was a fantastic debut novel by Daniel and I cannot wait to see where this saga goes from here. After reading this on my Kindle, I now have the urge and need to have a physical copy of this on my shelf.

Zoul &
ILLBORN by Daniel T. Jackson

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