The Warrior Heir by Cinna Williams Chima Reviewed by Andrew W.

The Warrior Heir

By Cinda Williams Chima

The Warrior Heir is a great book. It is fantasy fiction, but it seems like it’s real. It feels like you’re right there. Jack Swift is a Weirlind, one of the five magical guilds, the enchanter, the wizard, the warrior, the sorcerer, and the sooth-sayer, or seer. Jack is a warrior. However, he does not even know about the guilds. He takes medicine every morning, “For his heart,” his doctor, a wizard, says. But really it’s to restrain his warrior powers. When his Aunt Linda, an enchanter, comes to visit, he and his friends Will and Fitch go with her to his great-great grandmother’s grave. Once there, they get a sword named Shadowslayer from the grave. That’s when several wizards attacked Jack, Will, and Fitch. Linda was trying to lure a different wizard who was following them away. Jack used Shadowslayer, which had flames burning on it, to shoot flames at the wizards to get the three of them to safety. Linda gets back and helps Jack. Later, when Will and Fitch are home and she and Jack are at the house and Jack’s mother is working, Linda tells Jack about the Weirlind and guilds, and how he is a warrior, and about most of his neighbors being Weirlind. She has to get him to safety because wizards invented a game to save wizard lives where the dominant wizard houses, the White and Red Roses, sponsor a warrior in a fight to the death. The Red Rose has already sponsored a warrior and issued a challenge to the White Rose. Linda doesn’t want Jack to have to fight. She has him trained in swordplay and wizardry, because he should have been a wizard, if not for his doctor, who made him a wizard. Eventually, he goes to The Game anyway because the wizard who trained him in swordplay wants revenge on the Roses for killing his family. He is entered as a warrior for the Silver Dragon. But his opponent from the Red Rose turns out to be someone he knows from home in Trinity, Ohio. The two 16 year-olds are ready for the fight. But Jack doesn’t want to kill his opponent.

I don’t want to give away the ending, so to find out what happens, read the book!

Reviewed by Andrew W.