FORGED IN FIRE AND STARS

A girl is destined to become a magical blacksmith who helps her country’s restoration.

Ara’s father was the Loresmith—a blacksmith gifted by the gods with the magic to equip and guide the Loreknights in order to prevent the evil Vokkan Empire from overrunning Saetlund. But corruption weakened Saetlund from within, and it fell. Fifteen years later, Ara’s a smith who doesn’t know how to access her Loresmith destiny, as her father didn’t survive to train her. When Saetlund’s princess and prince return from exile to seek her out (believing that getting the gods’ blessing will enable Ara to take up the Loresmith mantle and turn the tide against the Vokkans), she sets off on a quest with them, forming a small band, with ties to the Resistance, naturally. The storyline is straightforward and mostly free of obstacles and setbacks; there are only minimal intrigues and twists (all of which are heavily forecasted). The third-person limited narrative following Ara is slow-paced and given to large chunks of exposition. At the conclusion, one quest is finished in time for the next quest to be assigned, and a character who (hopefully) will have more prominence in the sequel is teased. Ara is white; the royals are brown skinned, as is Ara’s love interest. While there’s association between ethnicity and geography, the racial diversity has no impact on the plot or world.

Aggressively mediocre—with hardly any smithing.