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                The Heir Chronicles is a young adult fantasy series by Cinda Williams Chima with five installments. The first three books (The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir, and The Dragon Heir) focus on the ever-lasting battle between wizards and ana-wizard weir, which are the other classes of magical beings. The last two books, The Enchanter Heir and The Sorcerer Heir focus on the survivors of the Thorn Hill massacre; they live at the Thorn Hill Foundation which is a cover for a network of assassins called Nightshade.

                The Warrior Heir follows the journey of Jack Swift, who, as the title suggests, finds out that he is one of the last of the Warriors. He then has to train to fight to the death in a tournament that is orchestrated by wizards, who use these tournaments as a “peaceful” way to allocate power between the houses. Ultimately this system is destroyed as he and his opponent, Ellen Stephenson, refuse to fight each other and change the rules of the tournaments. The first book therefore has a happy ending, Jack’s hometown, Trinity, becomes a sanctuary for the weir guilds and things are mostly back to normal.

                The Wizard Heir focuses on Seph McCauley, who is a young orphaned wizard with poor control over his incredible powers. His troublesome behavior lands him at the Havens, which is a private school that is isolated from the rest of society. As it turns out, this school is run by Gregory Leicester, an evil wizard who has created a group of wizard alumni who are all linked and subservient to him through dangerous magic he performs. Seph is eventually rescued by Linda Downey, who is later revealed to be his biological mother. Seph spends the rest of the book in Trinity, where he meets Madison Moss and is dragged into Leicester’s scheme for power.

                The Dragon Heir focuses on the Dragonheart, which is the source of all power for the Weir. Jason Haley is another wizard who escaped the Havens, and he and Seph became fast friends when they met at the school in the previous book. He steals the Dragonheart from a cave on a powerful wizard’s, Claude D’Orsay’s, property and brings it to Trinity along with other talismans from the cave. At this point, all of the characters are preparing the Sanctuary for war; Seph is responsible for defense, Jack and Ellen are training their undead warrior army, and their anaweir (non-magical) friends are using their technical skills to add to the town’s defense. Both Jason Haley and Madison Moss are drawn to the stone, but ultimately it is Madison who absorbs it and gains its power and the responsibility to govern the weir guilds.

                The last two books, The Enchanter Heir and The Sorcerer Heir follow the stories of Jonah Kinlock and Emma Greenwood. Jonah is the deadliest assassin in Nightshade, and the only one who can communicate with the undead spirits they hunt, called shades. Emma Greenwood led a normal life up until her grandfather was killed and she was sent to live with her father. Jonah tracks down her father because he is a lead in his search to piece together what happened at Thorn Hill; there is a fight, and Emma’s father dies along with several wizards. This incident is when the two meet, and for the rest of these books, they work together to try and discover the truth about their pasts. The two protagonists are a particularly interesting duo because they share a passion for music, and both are heavily invested in finding out what really happened at Thorn Hill.

                When I finished all of the books, I honestly felt as though I read two different series. The first three books went really well together, and I really enjoyed each of them. However, the last two books are about entirely new characters; they have an entirely different focus and new types of magic that aren’t discussed at all in the first books. I personally would have rather seen it as two separate series, or with the last two as spin-offs of the first series. The last two books were released at a much later date than the first books, so it is unclear if they were even meant to be in the series in the first place.

                I also felt that this series did not avoid enough cliches. For example, the ending of the first book had me rolling my eyes; it felt like such lazy writing to have the characters saved by an outside force that came out of nowhere. I would have loved to have seen the characters struggle and ultimately fail, or come up with some other ingenious way to save themselves from an impossible situation, just because it is so rare to see this in young adult fiction. Since the issue of unoriginal concepts persisted throughout the series, I felt that ultimately, The Heir Chronicles was a very basic example of what young adult fiction can be. It did not introduce any unprecedented characters, situations, or even have wholly unique magic. 

                I relent: I read the series in its entirety, so I can’t say that it wasn’t entertaining at all. But, as I’ve explained previously, I did not think it was particularly special or unique and I would not recommend this book to other readers. I feel that there are much better books available, and I would personally rather read a book that brings a little bit more to the table in terms of world building, dynamic characters, and interesting plots. 

Check out The Heir Chronicles at the Newport Beach Public Library.