My Favorite Books

The Walking Drum
Ender's Game
Dune
Jhereg
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Curse of Chalion
The Name of the Wind
Chronicles of the Black Company
The Faded Sun Trilogy
The Tar-Aiym Krang

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Review: Dragon Tongue

Dragon Tongue Dragon Tongue by Ava Richardson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book: ***
Performance: ****

A Simple YA Dragon Fantasy

A young woman grows up with tales of dragon readers from her Nanna while everyone else knows they are just a myth. That is until Cora meets a dragon face to face and is surprised that she can understand them … sort of. The story is a YA that is fairly par for the genre, so there is little nuance or complexity to the characters; even the plot is pretty straight forward and predictable. And like many teens, Cora can be overly dramatic, whiney and stubborn … traits that lead to several remarkably questionably decisions with consequences most of us could see coming. However, this is the first of the series, so our heroine has a lot of room to grow, World building is solid if somewhat basic. Character development is limited to the MC more or less, with almost basic caricatures of villains (from a teenager perspective at least). Although it follows nearly every dragon rider storyline that I have previously encountered in the broad strokes, there are still a few purposes and interesting twists that combined with a solid narration make this a little better that it would be on its own … and wholesome enough to maybe retain its relative feel good aspect throughout the series. I enjoyed it enough to look at the sequel.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#DragonTongue #RiseOfTheDragonRiders #FreeAudiobookCodes #KindleUnlimited

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My Ratings Explained ...

  • [ ***** ] Amazing Read - Perfect story, exciting, engrossing, well developed complex characters, solid plot with few to no holes, descriptive environments and place settings, great mystery elements, realistic dialogue, believable reactions and behaviors; a favorite that I can re-read many times.
  • [ **** ] Great Read - Highly entertaining and enjoyable, exciting storyline, well developed characters and settings, a few discrepancies but nothing that can’t be overlooked. Some aspect of the story was new/refreshing to me and/or intriguing. Recommended for everyone.
  • [ *** ] Good Read - Solid story with a 'good' ending, or has some other redeeming feature. Limited character development and/or over reliance on tropes. Noticeable discrepancies in world building and/or dialog/behavior that were distracting. I connected enough with the characters/world to read the entire series. Most of the books I read for fun are here. Recommended for fans of the genre.
  • [ ** ] Okay Read - Suitable for a brief, afternoon escape … flat or shallow characters with little to no development. Over the top character dialog and/or behavior. Poor world building with significant issues and/or mistakes indicating poor research. Excessive use of trivial detail, info dumps and/or pontification. Any issues with the story/characters are offset by some other aspect that I enjoyed. Not very memorable. May only appeal to a niche group of readers. Recommended for some (YMMV).
  • [ * ] Bad Read - Awkward and/or confusing writing style. Poor world building and/or unbelievable (or unlikeable) characters. Victimization, gaslighting, blatant abuse, unnecessary violence, child endangerment, or any other highly objectionable behaviors by Main characters. I didn't connect with the story at all; significant aspects of this story irritated me enough that I struggled to finished it. Series was abandoned. Not recommended.