2 out of 4 stars
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A Kingdom Forgotten by Charles W. McDonald is a fantasy book with portals, long living mages, plots, and subplots galore. There are many characters, such as mages (lameans), including Talamar, Eldrac, Damon, and Kellen. The main character, Damon is one you will love to hate, or hate to love. He plays one of those roles where you know that they are doing wrong, but you still kind of like them. Damon has a Master Plan, which you will hear about throughout the book, but there is no hint to what it is until the end, where it is revealed. Damon isn’t the only character that you may have conflicting feelings about. You may ask yourself, is this one a hero, a villain, or something in between?
I especially enjoyed Damon’s interactions with another mage, Kellen, who would “trade” spells with Damon. This could be sort of scary at times since one of Kellen’s spells leveled a whole city, and one of Damon’s spells misfired to make “Damon’s Star”.
The book portrays mages fighting in wars for more power. Flip the page and you will be in another world, another time, and with other characters. Towards the end of the book, there is a desire to find the “one” who is foretold to end all the worlds. A newly discovered magic user named Radin may be this “one”.
Unfortunately, the book wasn’t edited well, which did take away from the enjoyment of the story. In the reader’s guide, the author stated that it took him 21 years to write, so I expected more with the editing. Most of the errors were simply not adding a word to a sentence or a wrong word in the sentence. For example: “lousy time for him take on extra work” or “if his last thought was comforting one”. There were also others like: “Never taking his eyes of Michael” or “Not like you to worry about your safety, our ours for that matter”.
Overall this is a hard book for me to review. The author had a good plot, and the main characters were developed well. I really felt the last part of the book summed everything up appropriately, and the ending was fantastic. But, the continual jumping back and forth every couple pages from one world to another, from one person to another person, and at different time periods as well, made it very confusing for me. I stuck with it though, and I have to admit, I was glad I did. Things started making sense. I understood the characters, the different timelines, and the ending was great.
Readers that enjoy fantasy genres may enjoy this book. If you prefer a light read over a complex story, or if excessive errors bother you then you may want to skip this one. I also don’t recommend this book for younger readers as there are a lot of deaths.
I am taking one point off the rating for the excessive errors and one point off for the confusion I had in reading the first 200 pages. I am giving A Kingdom Forgotten a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. The last part of the book and the ending were good so I feel it deserves more than a 1 star rating. With some editing and maybe following an easier timeline I would have easily rated it the highest rating there is.
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A Kingdom Forgotten
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Wow, the story must have meant a lot to the author if they stuck with for that long. It's unfortunate that the editing wasn't up to par. The author should probably get some professional help because the book sounds terrific. I enjoyed reading your review. Thank you. 
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