Dees has won a Golden Heart Award, two RITAs for Category Suspense and Adventure and has also twice snared RT's Series Romantic Suspense of the Year. She is a great storyteller and the adventures in her more than fifty novels are often inspired by her own life. Dees is an Air Force vet, the youngest female pilot in Air Force history and fought in the first Gulf War. She's had amazing adventures and she's used her experiences to tell some kickass stories. But as much as she love romances, Cindy's other passion has been fantasy gaming. For almost twenty years she's been involved with Dragon Crest, one of the original live action role-playing games. She's the story content creator on the game and wanted to do an epic fantasy based on it, with the blessing and input of Dragon Crest founder Bill Flippin. The Sleeping King is the first in an epic fantasy series, featuring the best of the genre - near immortal imperial overlords, a prophecy of a sleeping elven king who's said to be the saviour of the races and two young people who are set on a path to save the day.
I have to confess that I was a bit confused at the beginning because there are so many characters and it jumps between those characters at first. You can see this is first book in a series so there is lot of introducing and world building to do.
Basically we have seven characters on this quest to wake the Sleeping King but the main people are Will; who learns family secrets after family is murdered and Raina; a healer who runs away from family. Sleeping King is supposed to save the world from this evil Emperor who we see on the first chapter. I wish there would have been more about him and the court but hopefully in the next book.
There’s adventure, battles, betrayals, evil emperors, orcs, elves etc. Lots of stuff happening! And I do have a weakness for elves…
One interesting fact was that death isn’t always permanent but you can be resurrected. It makes sense since the book is based on an RPG game but I though it was cool.
