The Riddlebreaker
The dangerous assignment for the Riddlebreaker
This book, The Riddlebreaker, is the first book in the Primal Blood series. I was allowed to review the Dutch version before release. Thank you Harper Collins and Rob Koops for this opportunity.
Keep in mind this book has only been published in Dutch by now. So here you read my honest review of that.
The book:
This is an exciting youth book in which we get to know the book guardian Obbe. He gets the life-threatening task of bringing ‘the Seventh book’ to the other side of Norgië. This is also the fantasy world where our story is set.
Rob Koops uses a quest story structure to present this world and its inhabitants to us. He usually uses a third-person perspective with some dialogue sprinkled in there.
My opinion:
The quest structure is a fun way to get to know a new world as a reader. Many great fantasy authors used this as well. For example ‘ The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien.
In the ‘Riddlebreaker’ we get to know characters with their own past. These unique backstories give us different parts of the puzzle that is Norgië. The mission sometimes conflicts with the habits and traditions of the characters, which gives more depth to them.
This is a youth book and you can notice that because of the simple sentence structure. Even though you can still enjoy this book as an adult because the plot really engulfs you in this world and the characters are complex enough.
The only thing I can point out is a nuance between Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Belgium, which the author could not have changed or foreseen. Since this is an English review I am not going to get technical about it here.
Conclusion:
In short, this is a nice Dutch fantasy book that I recommend to all young readers. To the parents, I give the advice to read along and enjoy it.
The last part ‘ An Old Chest’ gives an interesting background to the origins of this story. This makes it more interesting for adults and I am going to make the recipe for ‘Grunterdamse Honeycakes’ one day.
Love BookDragon.
