This was an interesting coming of age/fantasy, and I'm curious to see where the series will go. I enjoyed the story overall, the plot doesn't drag at all, which is nice. Chimera is exactly what you'd expect from a teenage boy, and I appreciate that he's true to that in his actions. (Although at times that makes him difficult to like, I can understand the reasoning behind making his character that way). I think my only real complaint is I would've liked to know more about the world and how things work. Overall, I think this would be great for teens who enjoy fantasy, as they'd likely be able to relate more to Chimera than older readers.

this was a great start to a series, it had wonderful characters and great world-building. I really enjoyed reading this and liked that there was a bit of mystery in the book as well as being a scifi book.

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Chimera is on the cusp of becoming a man. And when the reality of the tribes future is shown in the thankfulness of the manhood hunt's spoils, he realises that his tribe is in a kind of trouble that he's not sure how to help fix. His father is the Chieftain of the Storm Hunter tribe, and the tribe is in danger of starving. An Earthquake has ruined the hunting around their village, but there is hope. A piece of land that is perfect has been found, the only problem is, the rival tribe the Blood Hawks want it too. What follows shows the danger of secrets and lies, and a young man who wants nothing more than to see the future becoming brighter for the tribe that he will some day lead. War could mean the end of everything that he's ever known, and he will do everything in his power to see that it doesn't come to that.

I wasn't too sure how I felt about Chimera as I was reading it, however, after finishing it yesterday and taking time to sit on it for a while, I realised that I did really really enjoy it. The story felt fresh to me, and I welcomed it.

The world building wasn't really there, but to be honest, I felt that the story worked better without the massive amounts of info-dumping that would have been needed to explain everything. The reader is told things as it's needed, and it's treated as though this is just the way of the world, and for this story, it really worked well. We're not given a time where this story is set, but I feel that in a fantasy setting, it's not overly necessary. Because of the length of the story, I believe the approach the author took to explaining bits and pieces of the world worked great. I still have some questions, but I'm hoping that these will be answered in future instalments.

Chimera was an incredibly annoying character for me, but I get the feeling that it may have been Caskey's intention. When I think about it, Chimera is still a boy, he's only just becoming a man and after certain events, he's thrown into something that he didn't think he'd have to face until he was much, much older, and better equipped to deal with. He made some incredibly stupid decisions that were made from the heart, which I can kind of understand, but at the same time, in a tribal setting, one cannot make decisions to save the one, they MUST think of the many, and I feel that Chimera did not do this on so many occasions and I just wanted to throttle him until he understood. But again, he is still just a boy, so I guess I'll get over it hahaha.

At times, I felt like parts of the story were rushed, and in this instance, lengthening the story may have been to it's benefit. Like the sudden explosion of a reveal I was like "whoa, okay, I didn't realise this was where we were going" I understand including it as the 'bigger picture' over the trilogy, but I feel like some of the light was taken off the immediate threat and issues that needed to be dealt with in regard to the Blood Hawks. There is also the inclusion of a strange scar that Chimera has on his arm, while I feel like this is important, it felt like it kinda took a back seat to the rest of what was happening, so even though this was actually mentioned in the Goodreads and Netgalley synopsis, I felt like it wasn't really imperative to the story at this point.

Another round or two of editing would have also made a big difference as there were times where I was reading, and all of a sudden a random sentence fragment would appear and I had absolutely NO idea what I was reading. It was just a bit of a jumbled mess of words, that I'm assuming were meant to be deleted but were forgot about.

All in all, this was a really good story, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next for Chimera and his tribe.

This was a good start to what could be an interesting fantasy series. I often like to have a nice quick and short read, which this is, but I felt that the length actually let it down. When I read the first book in a fantasy series I want there to be world building and lore, but this felt like it barely scratched the surface simply because it couldn’t possibly fit anymore in. The action scenes all felt far too rushed, there should be more suspense between to create more impact.
The plot overall was fairly predictable for fantasy, which I was prepared for but it would’ve been nice to have mixed it up a bit!
I’d recommend it to YA who are maybe just getting into fantasy, but not for established fantasy readers.