H.L. Cherryholmes

The Lizard Queen, Volume One, is actually a mammoth of a book combining the first three books in the Lizard Queen series, a collection of sorts. 

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In This Shrinking World, we’re introduced to our main character, Amy, a recently dicovered CEO who goes on a jog one day, comes across an orange lizard, and is transported to a world very different from her own. Here, evil awaits around every corner, strangely colored people claim she’s been sent to rescue their world, and there’s a bounty on her head. While the idea of a modern-day person being sent into a fantasy world is by no means original, the author does manage to give the story a lot of different, original spins, making it an intriguing fantasy world. It all starts and falls with the main character, and Amy is most definitely intriguing. As a nearly forty-year-old woman, you wouldn’t think she’d make a good choice as protagonist, but she’s excellent. She’s mature, accepts help when she needs to, she’s clever, witty, and brave. This book is pretty much an introduction, and it has a slow build up, as the author describes the setting, the world the heroine finds herself in, the rules of this world and its inhabitants.

 

In the second book, From The Ashes, the plot really picks up. I don’t want to spoil the plot, since we’re already in the second part of the three-part volume here, but the pacing picks up, the characters grow and change, and evil comes closer.

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The third book, A Spectacular Lie, closes off volume one. The author keeps on expanding the back story and adding more to the history of the world Amy finds herself in, and that makes the story richer and grander, a fantasy epic in the making.

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This is an intriguing first volume in a well-crafted fantasy series, with expansive world-building and memorable characters. While Amy was my favorite, I liked the secondary characters – in particular her traveling companions – too. The first part is a bit slow to get through, but the pacing really picks up in part two and three.