Scan barcode
sundragonheartt's review
2.0
are you in the market to yell in rage at an insufferable book with a painfully Christian ajenda? Look no further than Dragonspell. Awful.
(I didn’t *technically* finish, but I know when a book is a waste of my time.)
(I didn’t *technically* finish, but I know when a book is a waste of my time.)
cute_monkey_girl's review
4.0
Even though the main character, Kale, frustrated me fairly regularly, the book was better than I remember.
etheral1's review
I remember first seeing this book and not being all to impressed with the cover... but you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. This book literally put a spell on me. I loved it. I miss it. The world was beautiful and the characters were beautiful and it is so special to me and the heroine... oh I love it. reminds me of Middle Earth from Lord of the Rings.
obstreperouslyreading's review
5.0
(Note to self, this was a reread)
Anyways, I absolutely love this series. I read it as a child and randomly think of it still. It was such a trip down memory lane to reread this book!
Anyways, I absolutely love this series. I read it as a child and randomly think of it still. It was such a trip down memory lane to reread this book!
ashleystahmer's review
4.0
This book was very well-written, and I thought the dragons were such a unique concept. I would definitely recommend this book to a friend or relative. My grandmother actually recommended the series to me, so kudos to her!
shicklin's review
Great book and allegory--much denser than I expected. It's Eli's book (Thanks Sarah and Brad), but he is always happy to share his books.
jscarpa14's review
3.0
RECEIVED FROM: Blogging For Books For Review
***NOTE MY REVIEWS OFTEN CONTAIN SPOILERS***
When Kale, an o’rant slave discovers a dragon egg in the stream by her home she is sent to serve in Palladins hall and take the dragon egg to him. However on her way she is intercepted by Grawligs, ogre like creatures who take her captive, only to be rescued by some of Palladins soldiers and enlisted for a quest to save a dragon meech egg from Risto, an enemy of Wulder and Palladin. But will Kale find the strength to embrace her new powers and the teachings of Wulder and Palladin? Will she be enough to save the egg from the powerful evil wizard?
Before I really begin I’ll mention I might not be the best audience to review this book. I’ll give you that it was well written and an interesting story, but it was less a fantasy novel and more a retelling of Christian values using characters like Palladin and Wulder to represent Jesus and God. As I’m agnostic, meaning I haven’t decided what I believe and probably won’t until I’ve researched religions enough to find one that meets with my own ideals of what is right and wrong, many of the messages portrayed in this book fell flat for me. Some of them were things I outright disagreed with.
For example at one point Kale discovers a dragon named Celise being held captive. The soldiers who hold her captive shoot her daily with poison to stop her from regaining her strength. They killed her entire family basically before her eyes. Once she’s freed she kills them and for the most part her new companions condemn her for it. I’m sorry but if someone killed my family I’d tear them to pieces as soon as I was able to as well. Basically the idea was the Celise should have forgiven them and left Wulder to mete punishment to the soldiers. My issue with that is one the soldiers deserved what they got and two it goes along with the ideal I often see abused in real life. The one where “devoutly religious” people mistreat everyone else regularly and because they go to confession or pray for forgiveness it’s somehow okay that they behave a poor excuses for human beings because their god forgives them for that. I’m not saying that every religious person does that, obviously that’s not the case. But there are way too many to count that do, people that seriously believe they can behave abominably and if they pray for forgiveness then that behavior is okay. It’s my main problem with religion, praying for forgiveness never makes abominable behavior okay in my personal opinion. Especially if it’s repeated behavior, like telling nasty rumors about young girls, asking for forgiveness one night and doing it all over again the next day. That doesn’t make it okay, it makes you a horrible person. It’s one thing to use your religion to appease guilt from the rare instance of saying or doing things you shouldn’t it’s another to do those thing repeatedly and believe you are absolved from guilt because of your religion. I think pushing this part of religious teachings through fiction or religious texts is wrong because in my opinion all it does is reinforce the ideals behind those who abuse their religions.
Another thing that bothered me is that Kale is often treated like she’s an idiot because she doesn’t know the religion inside and out. And it’s like she can’t do anything right. They chastise her for not knowing better, for not being able to make the right decisions on her own and then they chastise her again for not asking for permission from her superiors to make a decision the few times that she does make a decision on her own. So what exactly is it they want from this character? As a reader I found myself feeling like an idiot right alongside her because I didn’t see how she was doing anything wrong. At times I had to walk away from the book just because I was getting so frustrated that it never seemed this character could get it right when to me it seemed like she did willingly everything they asked of her.
Back to the religious front at one point Kale is chastised for believing she is the center of the quest. I mean she’s the one everyone is there to protect, she’s the one who’s supposed to find the meech egg and care for the baby dragon and she’s the only one with the ability to find dragon eggs. OF COURSE she’s not the center of the quest right? Nope, Wulder is the center of the quest even though he’s more a religious figure than a character; he is the center of everything. And, like mentioned before, even though everything points to Kale being the center of the quest, she’s treated like an idiot for not understanding that Wulder is the center of the quest.
Because the point in the novel is more to teach Christian ideals than to tell a fantasy story most of the action scenes aren’t very riveting, or at least what you feel should be action scenes aren’t very action like. The main villain the wizard Risto who seeks to use the meech egg to create a new race of slave beings doesn’t even appear until toward the final chapters. In later scenes he mind speaks with Kale which scares her but he physically doesn’t appear until the final chapters. And instead of some big physical battle it’s all mentally trying to push her to willingly follow him. It’s an attempt to get her to turn away from her religion and following of Palladin to serve Risto instead. There isn’t a battle, there isn’t torture or imprisonment. After all the characters in the quest say no it’s like he just leaves them alone because followers of Wulder and Palladin are apparently untouchable? The main strength of these characters is the ability to say the phrase “I stand under Wulder’s authority” and therefore gain protection from pretty much everything. The few fight scenes included are basically breezed through or not really shown since the main character Kale is pretty much supposed to run away and repeat her Wulder phrases when anything happens.
So what have we learned? If someone wrongs you, it’s wrong to get even and if faced with battle repeat religious phrases and you will then be protected- a little unrealistic to my state of mind. It’s one thing to show religious ideals within a story, it’s another to use religion as the action instead of giving the character real strengths and protection of their own. You could still portray the religious ideals in that if you follow the teachings of Christianity all of your strengths and talents are a gift from God and should you prosper it’s because he wanted you to. Therefore it seems realistic that you could fight back and not just repeat prayers during a battle and you’d still being getting Wulder’s help since he’s the one that gave you the ability to do something other than pray.
The story was well written and Paul does create some interesting characters. Another issue I had with her work those was that many of the descriptions were confusing to me. I couldn’t really picture the beings that I wasn’t already familiar with and normally I have a pretty good imagination. I found myself rereading some descriptions three or four times trying to understand what she’s trying to describe to me before just giving up and moving on. The idea of the plot was somewhat original though it does bear some similarities to both Eragon and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I’d say the story was kind of a combination of these two tales, but with a religious bent to it. If the action scenes had been played out instead of skipped over I think this could have been a tale to rival those well known stories, but with the falling back to religion anywhere she could really show conflict I didn’t think it quite measured up. In some ways the plot went in a logical order, but many of the times when she threw the religion back into the mix it was more of a huh? For example when Kale thinks she’s lost the dragons and the eggs but no one seems to be downhearted because she did it to save the rest of her companions’ lives. Okay yes she made the right decision and they should be thankful for that but Kale seems to be the only one bothered by the idea that they might have gone through all of that for nothing. Even if I was thankful to be alive I think I’d be feeling some frustration that my quest might have been for no good reason. Don’t get me wrong this story was extremely interesting; I just felt it relied too much on religion to tell the story and not enough on action and logical reactions to things that occurred within the story.
The story was moderately paced, not really fast but not really slow either, but I do feel this pacing worked well for the story. Paul has an original voice and beautifully portrays a close third person point of view. Meaning while we saw everything through Kale’s eyes it still allowed for detailed descriptions of surrounding and people including Kale herself. Not all of those descriptions were confusing although as mentioned above a few were. The ones they weren’t however were extremely well done and presented a nice clear picture of the scene. There really wasn’t an in between with descriptions in this book either they were crystal clear or they made no sense. There wasn’t anything in the middle where it was kind of vague but you got the idea, only one extreme or the other.
While all of the characters for the most part are memorable and likeable, my favorites being the dragon hatchlings Gymn and Meta , the only character I felt was really well developed was Kale herself. I would have liked to see a little more character development in the secondary characters. Most of the other characters can be described in short phrases which shouldn’t the case if a character is well developed. For example The Wizard Fenworth is powerful, but forgetful and he turns into a tree if he stays still for too long. That’s basically the entire character description of what could have been a truly interesting secondary character. All of these characters had so much potential but really needed a good fleshing out. For the most part this is only really going to find a home with Christian lovers of fantasy. Most regular fantasy fans will be disappointed with the way action is handled throughout the book. However the book is well written enough that I think Christians who enjoy fantasy themed stories will actually adore this tale because it will mix a love of dragons and fantasy creatures with religious teachings in a way that I think will truly appeal to the devoutly religious. Unfortunately I’m not one of the devoutly religious so I thought the book was okay, worth reading, but nothing I’d read more than once.
***NOTE MY REVIEWS OFTEN CONTAIN SPOILERS***
When Kale, an o’rant slave discovers a dragon egg in the stream by her home she is sent to serve in Palladins hall and take the dragon egg to him. However on her way she is intercepted by Grawligs, ogre like creatures who take her captive, only to be rescued by some of Palladins soldiers and enlisted for a quest to save a dragon meech egg from Risto, an enemy of Wulder and Palladin. But will Kale find the strength to embrace her new powers and the teachings of Wulder and Palladin? Will she be enough to save the egg from the powerful evil wizard?
Before I really begin I’ll mention I might not be the best audience to review this book. I’ll give you that it was well written and an interesting story, but it was less a fantasy novel and more a retelling of Christian values using characters like Palladin and Wulder to represent Jesus and God. As I’m agnostic, meaning I haven’t decided what I believe and probably won’t until I’ve researched religions enough to find one that meets with my own ideals of what is right and wrong, many of the messages portrayed in this book fell flat for me. Some of them were things I outright disagreed with.
For example at one point Kale discovers a dragon named Celise being held captive. The soldiers who hold her captive shoot her daily with poison to stop her from regaining her strength. They killed her entire family basically before her eyes. Once she’s freed she kills them and for the most part her new companions condemn her for it. I’m sorry but if someone killed my family I’d tear them to pieces as soon as I was able to as well. Basically the idea was the Celise should have forgiven them and left Wulder to mete punishment to the soldiers. My issue with that is one the soldiers deserved what they got and two it goes along with the ideal I often see abused in real life. The one where “devoutly religious” people mistreat everyone else regularly and because they go to confession or pray for forgiveness it’s somehow okay that they behave a poor excuses for human beings because their god forgives them for that. I’m not saying that every religious person does that, obviously that’s not the case. But there are way too many to count that do, people that seriously believe they can behave abominably and if they pray for forgiveness then that behavior is okay. It’s my main problem with religion, praying for forgiveness never makes abominable behavior okay in my personal opinion. Especially if it’s repeated behavior, like telling nasty rumors about young girls, asking for forgiveness one night and doing it all over again the next day. That doesn’t make it okay, it makes you a horrible person. It’s one thing to use your religion to appease guilt from the rare instance of saying or doing things you shouldn’t it’s another to do those thing repeatedly and believe you are absolved from guilt because of your religion. I think pushing this part of religious teachings through fiction or religious texts is wrong because in my opinion all it does is reinforce the ideals behind those who abuse their religions.
Another thing that bothered me is that Kale is often treated like she’s an idiot because she doesn’t know the religion inside and out. And it’s like she can’t do anything right. They chastise her for not knowing better, for not being able to make the right decisions on her own and then they chastise her again for not asking for permission from her superiors to make a decision the few times that she does make a decision on her own. So what exactly is it they want from this character? As a reader I found myself feeling like an idiot right alongside her because I didn’t see how she was doing anything wrong. At times I had to walk away from the book just because I was getting so frustrated that it never seemed this character could get it right when to me it seemed like she did willingly everything they asked of her.
Back to the religious front at one point Kale is chastised for believing she is the center of the quest. I mean she’s the one everyone is there to protect, she’s the one who’s supposed to find the meech egg and care for the baby dragon and she’s the only one with the ability to find dragon eggs. OF COURSE she’s not the center of the quest right? Nope, Wulder is the center of the quest even though he’s more a religious figure than a character; he is the center of everything. And, like mentioned before, even though everything points to Kale being the center of the quest, she’s treated like an idiot for not understanding that Wulder is the center of the quest.
Because the point in the novel is more to teach Christian ideals than to tell a fantasy story most of the action scenes aren’t very riveting, or at least what you feel should be action scenes aren’t very action like. The main villain the wizard Risto who seeks to use the meech egg to create a new race of slave beings doesn’t even appear until toward the final chapters. In later scenes he mind speaks with Kale which scares her but he physically doesn’t appear until the final chapters. And instead of some big physical battle it’s all mentally trying to push her to willingly follow him. It’s an attempt to get her to turn away from her religion and following of Palladin to serve Risto instead. There isn’t a battle, there isn’t torture or imprisonment. After all the characters in the quest say no it’s like he just leaves them alone because followers of Wulder and Palladin are apparently untouchable? The main strength of these characters is the ability to say the phrase “I stand under Wulder’s authority” and therefore gain protection from pretty much everything. The few fight scenes included are basically breezed through or not really shown since the main character Kale is pretty much supposed to run away and repeat her Wulder phrases when anything happens.
So what have we learned? If someone wrongs you, it’s wrong to get even and if faced with battle repeat religious phrases and you will then be protected- a little unrealistic to my state of mind. It’s one thing to show religious ideals within a story, it’s another to use religion as the action instead of giving the character real strengths and protection of their own. You could still portray the religious ideals in that if you follow the teachings of Christianity all of your strengths and talents are a gift from God and should you prosper it’s because he wanted you to. Therefore it seems realistic that you could fight back and not just repeat prayers during a battle and you’d still being getting Wulder’s help since he’s the one that gave you the ability to do something other than pray.
The story was well written and Paul does create some interesting characters. Another issue I had with her work those was that many of the descriptions were confusing to me. I couldn’t really picture the beings that I wasn’t already familiar with and normally I have a pretty good imagination. I found myself rereading some descriptions three or four times trying to understand what she’s trying to describe to me before just giving up and moving on. The idea of the plot was somewhat original though it does bear some similarities to both Eragon and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I’d say the story was kind of a combination of these two tales, but with a religious bent to it. If the action scenes had been played out instead of skipped over I think this could have been a tale to rival those well known stories, but with the falling back to religion anywhere she could really show conflict I didn’t think it quite measured up. In some ways the plot went in a logical order, but many of the times when she threw the religion back into the mix it was more of a huh? For example when Kale thinks she’s lost the dragons and the eggs but no one seems to be downhearted because she did it to save the rest of her companions’ lives. Okay yes she made the right decision and they should be thankful for that but Kale seems to be the only one bothered by the idea that they might have gone through all of that for nothing. Even if I was thankful to be alive I think I’d be feeling some frustration that my quest might have been for no good reason. Don’t get me wrong this story was extremely interesting; I just felt it relied too much on religion to tell the story and not enough on action and logical reactions to things that occurred within the story.
The story was moderately paced, not really fast but not really slow either, but I do feel this pacing worked well for the story. Paul has an original voice and beautifully portrays a close third person point of view. Meaning while we saw everything through Kale’s eyes it still allowed for detailed descriptions of surrounding and people including Kale herself. Not all of those descriptions were confusing although as mentioned above a few were. The ones they weren’t however were extremely well done and presented a nice clear picture of the scene. There really wasn’t an in between with descriptions in this book either they were crystal clear or they made no sense. There wasn’t anything in the middle where it was kind of vague but you got the idea, only one extreme or the other.
While all of the characters for the most part are memorable and likeable, my favorites being the dragon hatchlings Gymn and Meta , the only character I felt was really well developed was Kale herself. I would have liked to see a little more character development in the secondary characters. Most of the other characters can be described in short phrases which shouldn’t the case if a character is well developed. For example The Wizard Fenworth is powerful, but forgetful and he turns into a tree if he stays still for too long. That’s basically the entire character description of what could have been a truly interesting secondary character. All of these characters had so much potential but really needed a good fleshing out. For the most part this is only really going to find a home with Christian lovers of fantasy. Most regular fantasy fans will be disappointed with the way action is handled throughout the book. However the book is well written enough that I think Christians who enjoy fantasy themed stories will actually adore this tale because it will mix a love of dragons and fantasy creatures with religious teachings in a way that I think will truly appeal to the devoutly religious. Unfortunately I’m not one of the devoutly religious so I thought the book was okay, worth reading, but nothing I’d read more than once.
alyssa_watson's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
I think that this book is okay at best. I originally bought it about 10 years ago when I was in a dragon phase. I found the characters to be annoying, mainly Kale and Paladin. Kale is insecure and takes every opportunity to remind the reader of that fact. I don't mind such issues in characters, but it does not need to be addressed every page. Additionally the Christian subthemes are about as well hidden as a toddler hiding behind a pole. Again the issue isn't the fact that the subthemes exist, but rather that they are blasted in your face. I do not recommend this book. But that is just my opinion.
mrssoule's review
3.0
I think if I'd read this when I was 13 or 14, I would be giving it at least 4 stars. The world is creative & original, but there were too many distinct types of creatures for me to keep track. I did discover a glossary in the back after I'd finished the book, but it was only so helpful. I would have appreciated a page of example sketches of the different races. If my son suddenly starts showing an interest in fiction, I'd be completely fine with him reading this book.