This book series has so much potential but it can't quite find it's own style I feel like. Right now it seems like a poor fusion of Warrior Cats and Harry Potter ( I'm sorry ). I do enjoy the story and fantasy world. Recently I watched the movie and I have to admit, although I've NEVER said this before, that the movie is... better. Hear me out : The plot of the movie was fast-paced, tragic and well-crafted. The book needed three volumes to tell all of that with way less tension and lots of "what?" moments. Until the third volume it all made sense, and I appreciate the the author tried to add more action and lore. But here's the thing : The action was pretty non-coherent. At one point they simultaneously decided that the magnetic triangle thing was DEFINITELY were Ezylryb was being held captive, despite nobody really having any clue about that, let alone thinking that Ezylryb had ANYTHING to do with Metalbeak in the first place. Relation between St. Aegilius and Metalbeaks' followers was understandable in the movie, but they don't have any relation in the book, so what exactly are they fighting for? And in the movie, Kludd was Metalbeak's protégé, while in the books it just turns out that Metalbeak and Kludd are the same person, which, I'm sorry, makes no sense to me. Because isn't Soren pretty young himself, and isn't Kludd only a couple days older? Then how come he's already a legend, involved in so gruesome a fight that his beak was ripped off, and leader of a cult? It seemed like a poor attempt to create a surprise effect by the same old "Evil Brother vs Good Brother". Which in the book was not implemented like that, and obviously for the better. The author tried to implement lore as well, which was a nice attempt. Ezylryb's background story in the northern lands for example. Yet a good story would have connected the dots and created a big picture, one event leading to another, every war having a reason and a result, but in this book, everything sort of stands alone, without explanation. An even worse example is Kludd, who is just described as "evil" and "a bad apple" from birth. And this is the absolute worst thing a story can do. Give us a villain, make him power-hungry and cunning by nature, that's alright. But such a young owl, that has not even had any chance to "build" his own character, such an owl is unrealistic and that he turned up as the villain was less a surprise but more of a "mhh of course". Apart from that, it seems like only Soren gets any valid character depth while the others just flock around him, doing whatever to fuel the protagonist's own story. Nevertheless I'm excited to see how it continues and maybe there will be some more explanations as to why things turn out the way they have turned out. The story itself is still lovable and creatively written, it just has a lot of flaws.