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Fantasy review: The Rage of Dragons



This week I read The Rage of Dragons, by Evan Winter. While it took me a while to sink in to, once I was hooked I was in! I'm looking forward to the sequel, which comes out about a week after my birthday (and just might be my birthday gift to myself!). How I felt about this book changed drastically as I read, so I'm going to try to organize this review around those reactions. Warning--there will be spoilers!

1. The comps. This book has a definite Game of Thrones vibe, with the second-world, the dragons, the war. And I didn't particularly like GoT. In fact, given those basic similarities, I'm not even sure why I picked up this book. However, Rage of Dragons had one shining difference from GoT -- for the most part, this is a single POV story. And I liked it! We still get a sense of the sweeping world and warring factions, even though we're only seeing the world from a single person's point of view. There were a few odd chapters from a different viewpoint, and I didn't really think those fit in with the story very well. 

2. The hype. The inside jacket has the following blurb, edited down: "Young, gift-less Tau...has a plan of escape. Until those closest to him are brutally murdered, and his grief swiftly turns to anger." As a book blurb, this sets up a chain of events that we expect. Tau goes along in his life, ignorant to the way his world could turn its cruelty to him, and his father is murdered. This causes him to take action and jump into the chain of events that will carry him through the rest of the book.

However.

The blurb spoke of "those closest to him" who were murdered. Not just his father. Not Zuri. Not Jabari. And later, not Hadith, or Uduak. I spent the whole first half of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop on Zuri and Jabari, on his sister and the other people from home. I should really just stop reading the blurbs, because they always pull me out of the story. 

3. The tropes. Fight school, fight school!! Once Tau was accepted into training, I settled into the story. For some reason I can't explain (since I'm just about the least athletic person) I love any story that takes place in a fight school. Training for the knighthood, to be a spy, to join the Ihagu? Sign me up. The more our protagonists have to work and struggle to perfect their skills, the happier I am. 

4. The world. I can't remember ever reading another book where the protagonist is part of the oppressors in the world. And between the prologue and the end of the book, we can really see that -- the Chosen are colonizers! That should make them unsympathetic! And yet, as we read along with Tau and see those around him fighting for survival, I am very excited to see where this leads. 

5. The arc. Oooh the arc. Another first for me -- I can't think of another book with a negative character arc, especially one that just hit so well in the final passages. Despite that, I'm not ready to give up hope for Tau. 

More books, please!!

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