The Digital Renaissance: Review: Dragon Tongue

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Review: 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.