itibaren Wirwilty, פולין itibaren Wirwilty, פולין

Quest for Nobility is primarily the story of Darius and Dyla Telkur, the twin heirs of the Telkur Duchy. When their parents are murdered and framed for financial fraud, the two find themselves in the precarious position of having to repair the damage done to their family's reputation and wealth. All the while, the nefarious Baron Avikar and other elements from outside nations threaten to unravel what little progress the twins are able to make. Allies are casually murdered and trust must be developed with people who are relative strangers in order to bring the Duchy back to its former glory. One element of this book that really makes me wish I could rate it higher is the relative difference in technology level that exists between Otharia and our own world. In Otharia, the primary mode of transportation in the portal. With the assistance of a crystal, a telekinetic can open a portal across various distances, depending on their skill and the quality of the crystal. As a means of transportation, this is superior to anything in our own world. As a result, though, Otharia has not developed many of the technological advances that have appeared as a result of our own transportation challenges. The only ships in Otharia are powered by wind. There are no cars, no steam, and certainly no airplanes. There isn't even any mention of a horse (though I assume they have some kind of pack-carrying animal for heavy loads). The technology is sufficient to develop firearms, so presumably there are some reasonably advance machining techniques available on their world. This difference was one of my favorite aspects of the book. One of two things that really hurts the book is the electronic formatting. There is no table of contents on the Nook version (can't confirm about the Kindle). The opening of the book runs through a rapid-fire series of short scenes that I would have like to regularly reference as I read through the rest of the chapters, difficult without a table of contents. Another problem that drove me crazy immediately after buying the book is that the book's cover, a fine-looking depiction of a classic coat of arms, can't be viewed on the Nook's full screen. You can look at it online and in the Nook's smaller, color touchscreen, but there's nothing like looking at a lovingly crafted cover between your fingers. With Quest for Nobility, I wasn't able to do that. Another formatting curiosity is the introductions that appears at the beginning of each chapter. These introductions help provide the reader with a 'slice of the world', very handy when trying to familiarize new readers with the key political and Psi-based concepts of the book. However, these introductions appear in a relatively narrow column and are much thinner than the rest of the text. They aren't hard to read, bit it's a bit like having a tiny, textural waterfall in the middle of your e-reader. The author does a good job of communicating the events of the book. There are a few writing quirks. On occasion, a character will repeat, verbatim, a piece of narrative presented to the reader in a previous paragraph. A similar event happens with one of the introductions. While there are not a lot of grammatical errors, there are just enough that I was pulled out of the author's world at some very inconvenient times. This is unfortunate, and thankfully doesn't happen during the book's climactic ending. Comment