From Goodreads: It was only a nightmare at first, but Damont soon realizes that he can see into the future-a curse he has to live with for being the only son of a king dead for a thousand years, with a mother who is the goddess of time.

A man in black armor with a face as obscure as the shadows mantling him laughs wickedly. Who is he and why does he continue to haunt me, Damont wonders. Appearing only in his dreams, the man in the black armor stands alone and laughs high as if to mock him while the world around him burns to cinder. “They are not dreams, my son,” a voice calls out to him in a vision after the many nightmares-claiming to be his mother whom abandoned him when he was but a child. “They are shards of a broken world to come if you so take the path of your father.” If such a path does lie ahead beyond a throne that sits vacant for centuries, with an empire in the east growling for war, then Damont Langörn realizes he has but one choice: follow the visions and seek out the truth lost to both him and the world behind his lineage-but will he be strong enough to face such a malevolent foe of his nightmares?

With a vampire and a sorceress at his side, Damont begins his journey, but such a road is not an easy one to take if the gods themselves do not wish for his return as the king who would unite the world against their existence and bring demise to their very doorstep.

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Naqvi has created an ingenious world complete with gods and goddesses, vampires, sorcerers, kings and queens… and his style emulates that of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I was very impressed with the writing style and the story itself; Naqvi has a knack for storytelling, though I must admit that I found the sheer amount of historical background a little much for my taste.  Now, that being said, I’m also admitting that I had extreme difficulty reading Tolkien for the same reason.  I’m not a history buff and I tend to focus on the action of a novel more so than the vital background information, so I have a hard time reading through the histories of these types of novels.  Yet, as Naqvi emulates Tolkien’s style, and as Acadia is the first novel in this series, the historical aspects of the novel are really the foundation of the story, and it needs to be there.  Although it wasn’t my forte, as I thought the action was minimal compared to the vast history, Naqvi has created a wonderful backdrop of the rest of his series, creating beautiful descriptions of the lands and its people, and I believe that many readers will highly enjoy Acadia, especially if they are fans of Tolkien. 

I really did like the novel, and I think many people will highly enjoy it, especially as the second edition comes out and small grammatical errors are fixed.  Naqvi is a very fluid writer and, though there are grammatical errors here and there, I must say that the dialogue throughout the novel really caught my attention.  Naqvi is writing about the middle lands, set in the 5000s, yet, as the novel encompasses an alternate world, it utilizes archaic language.  Naqvi does a phenomenal job keeping his characters dialogue on point, and they never once switch into slang, which is something I see many authors accidentally doing when trying to write archaic dialogue—mainly because it is second nature.  It is obvious that Naqvi has put a lot of time, energy, and love into his novel, and he even utilizes footnotes to aid the reader as the story unfolds.  Tolkien fans really should read this novel.  Three stars.

I received a copy of this novel from the author in exchange for an honest review.