Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Dragonfall by L.R. Lam

8 reviews

kiwij96's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional lighthearted tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A fun and easy read, with relatively short chapters. An interesting concept for sure, writing both first, second and third perspectives, following a dragon chasing a prophecy, a thief trying to protect their family name, and a young acolyte torn between right and wrong. Good discussions on gender identity too. Fun fantasy heist with friendships, trust, betrayal, and morality.

Definitely could have done with more worldbuilding and plot written into the text. The characters were very "woe is me" at times where it wasn't needed. I appreciated how Everen's POV included the humans teaching him how their society worked in terms of how gender identity and pronouns worked. Also, was not a fan of the romance subplot. It would have worked much better if the characters just learned each other's surnames as an act of trust.

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hollowpointe's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Holy shit

Okay I loved so much about this. One- the amount of world building alone was enough to keep me engaged. The dragon religion spawning off from vanishing them centuries ago? The discussions of caste and honorifics, the concept of becoming starving, the difference between countries views on gender- it all kept me very entertained and intrigued. Also, Everen and Arcady both having their own issues and having to work past them to even BEGIN trusting each other was a good thing to witness, mostly because a lot of what I've read recently is instant trust or one big feat creates trust.
All in all, the heist and the assassin plotlines were well balanced to me and I thoroughly enjoyed them both.
As for characters, Soren was an interesting arc as she very much is codependent on Magnes who is also like the worst and did actually make me angry. An antagonist that's truly despicable, he was perfect for the mood of the book.
The title alone also was very pleasing for me especially when it occurred to me it was a reference to whale falls- something that usually creates and maintains an ecosystem for years where they fall and decay- much like how Arcady is now thriving due to Everen falling.
Dear lord this one won't be leaving my brain for a while.

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cookiecat73's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I enjoyed this, but I didn't love it. We have two main points of view, and one or two more which come up more rarely. The main two are Arcady and Everen. I liked Arcady a lot, their backstory was pretty dark but I enjoyed their personality and their motivations were cool and intresting, and it means a lot to me to have a main character who is canonically and openely genderqueer. Everen on the other hand was a superior brat. I know that's on purpose and he does improve and I did like him more by the end, but for the most part I didn't like him or enjoy his povs very much. The world building and plot were mostly just fine, I didn't have any major critisisms, gripes, or things I hated, but I didn't love it either. I guess it's just not completely my kinda book, and that's fine, I still liked it.

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norwegianforestreader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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bookstarbri's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Admittedly, I have a small obsession with dragons.

When it comes to books with dragons, I go weak in the knees because dragons are SO cool. And this book truly didn't disappoint me. I think it was very close to perfection. I had a few nit-picky gripes, which I'll get into in a bit, but first I want to talk about how much I loved this book as a whole. I know a lot of people will not like the way it is written, and I can understand why. There are 5 POVs total, with it mostly going back and forth between 2 (and a third a few times as well, though not as frequently). This back and forth may be a little jarring especially since the POVs are not just different characters but also different styles of POV as well. We have one that is standard first person, one that is first but is also sort of told like a letter so it dips into second. The remaining ones are all third. I thought this was really cool and a very interesting way to write a story like this, and I appreciated the experimental storytelling a lot and really enjoyed it. It made me especially love Everen's chapters!

Onto the characters, I thought they were (mostly) great! I LOVED Arcady and Everen. The side characters were interesting as well. One thing that kept me from giving this 5 stars was that I was bored with Sorin's chapters in the middle? There were definitely times when I just wanted to skip her POV and go back to the main story. Her story fits into this one and it all ties together, and I actually loved her POVs in the beginning, but those middle ones dragged on just a bit. Otherwise, I was really captivated in this story pretty much from start to finish. I thought the pacing was great and the events leading up to the finale were amazing!

This book had some great twists as well. There were three times when my mouth dropped because I hadn't expected something. Truly, it was awesome how easily L.R. Lam was able to bring something up and take it somewhere I hadn't expected at all without it feeling like a cheap surprise.

This is the start of a series and I am so excited that it is! I can't WAIT to read book 2. I loved this ending it made me feel so many things. This book is a new favorite and I have high hopes for book 2!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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bigteo's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

I don’t usually read fantasy, but this did intrigue me as having a dragon main character. Sadly it fell completely flat. I’m rating it higher than I would another run of the mill fantasy YA because at least there were some plot points and twists that were somewhat decent.

The writing style wasn’t awful but it also wasn’t exactly great.

The characters, especially Arcady (the human), were so painfully bland and boring and nothing about them made me invested in the slightest. Everen (the dragon) had the most potential I suppose. There were a total of about FIVE different character POVs, and they changed each chapter. They also changed perspective; Everen narrated in second person, Arcady in first, and Sorrin (another human assassin character that had no real impact on the plot and never interacted with the main cast) narrated in third person. I can’t help but feel this was a huge detriment for the book. Why was it necessary at all? Wouldn’t the book have been better if we simply stuck with Everen, since he’s a classic fish-out-of-water character that doesn’t understand human customs and thus would have been a great way to contrast the cultural differences between dragons and the humans of the world? I also can’t help but feel that the choice for Everen to narrate about Arcady in second person was simply a way to avoid having to use any pronouns for Arcady, which would serve to make Arcady into a self insert character for the readers.

Anyways, back to the characters. Arcady was boring and edgy and “I’m not like other thieves, I steal for good reasons” and “I hate the rich” in a way that echoed the author’s sentiments about the class system and capitalism in real life. The issue with that it lacks subtlety, is preachy, and doesn’t really fit in a fantasy society which has different rules from real life. Their motives didn’t really make sense either. They’re trying to find proof that their grandfather didn’t cause a plague and clear their family name, and the solution to that is to… go to school? Under the same government system that discriminated against them? They’re a thief, can’t they simply steal the information that their grandfather was framed? Shouldn’t the character (and the thief guild, called the Marricks) be aiming more for a societal upheaval? They complain so much about the rich upper class in the book that you’d expect there to be more of a payoff.

Everen was also a missed opportunity. He didn’t really feel like a dragon at all. I’ve seen some complain about his “I hate all humans” attitude but I feel like if the author pushed it more strongly it could have been interesting to make his prejudices against the human race come under scrutiny when faced with having to adapt to human customs. The author could have set Arcady to challenge Everen’s preconceived notions about how humans are inherently evil and thus facilitated his development. Nothing about his and Arcady’s relationship makes sense. There is literally no reason for Everen to like them at the end of the book. Nothing significant happens between them for Everen to suddenly want to save their life and save humanity.

The biggest letdown of this book by far was the abysmal world building.

It feels like the author infodumps completely irrelevant information in an unnatural way and then fails to build a cohesive and interesting fantasy world. There’s a scene in which Everen and Arcady share information about eachother’s cultures and instead of learning anything interesting or having the characters challenge eachother, we get a page long rant about how everyone should accept everyone’s preferred pronouns and how the pronoun system works, which completely takes me out of the story and seems so bizarrely out of place. There’s no issue with wanting to be inclusive, but the way the character exposits this information is so obviously out of place and comes across as the author basically directly preaching to the reader. There are so many other instances too where the author will tell us directly about something with absolutely no subtlety or relevance to the plot or characters.

Speaking of pronouns, it’s explained that people of higher status will be given a capitalised pronoun, like “the priest drunk from Their cup,” as an example. The problem with the capitalisation is that it’s completely unnatural with modern English and makes certain passages downright confusing to read. I found myself having to reread sections with capitalised pronouns because I kept on thinking it came after a full stop. I don’t see how this piece of world building was necessary seeing as there are already ways to show respect in English (like honorifics, which already exist in the world as “Sar” which is like “Sir” I guess.) For all the author’s insistence of correct pronouns, there was a passage in the book in which a character describes the Jaskian language (a rival country/city state) as being ugly and harsh. Nothing is done to challenge this. Jaskian’s have more rigid ideas about gender therefore their culture/language sucks, which is definitely fantasy xenophobia, no?

As an aside, I still don’t know what a “Drakine” actually is, obviously it’s some sort of upper class-man but it is literally never explained. That’s a common issue you’ll find in this book.

The magic system is also poorly explained. I personally dislike the trope of having all humans capable of magic since it alienates me from relating to the human characters and their struggles, but this might just be a personal preference so I digress. There are other reviews that talk about the fantasy world building more thoroughly than I can since I don’t read fantasy often and therefore I don’t recognise certain tropes as easily.

My final criticism that I haven’t seen discussed in other reviews is that this world literally contains dragon-gods and shadow rift creatures but nothing else? Wyverns are basically carrier pigeons, and there are passing mentions of mythical creatures like selkies, but no mention of them actually existing? The story takes place in a singular city which was also a missed opportunity to have the characters in different locations with different spectacular fantasy species that add flavour to the setting.

Anyways this review is way too long already so to sum it up i felt like this book was a bad, aimless mess with unlikeable characters that reek of missed opportunities. At least the twist at the end with a certain character was kind of decent? Not nearly enough to get me interested in reading the sequel when it comes out.

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marleywrites's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Thank you to NetGalley for this arc!

The first 12% of this book, I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. But then, it picked up tremendously and I became obsessed. I read about 60% in one sitting.

This book has queer enemies to lovers to ??? and it’s the perfect slow burn. I also enjoyed the queer normative world where everyone is referred to with they/them pronouns until told otherwise. It worked well and I enjoyed that twist on reality.

I really love Everen as a character. He is so complex and I can’t wait to learn more about him throughout this trilogy. I actually really enjoyed the second person POV which makes sense at the end of the novel. Arcady was also fascinating, I loved how they are always dressed in cool outfits and how they have taken on the most challenging magical tasks.

The bond building between these two is dynamic and I loved the way it was described.

The last 15%— phew! You’re gonna wanna read that in one sitting. My kindle died at 92% and I was devastated!! I had to wait for it to wake back up to be able to read more.

Overall, I loved this story and these characters and I plan to read the rest of the trilogy. I’m mad I have to wait so long for the next book!

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alibookedup's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

To be honest, I was extremely and pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was worried based on the synopsis, that the story would spin out of control because it seemed like a fantasy book tackling something big. However, it was quite the opposite experience and, in fact, the fantastical concepts it promotes are what you hope for when picking up a book. It's an epic fantasy with incredible world building and characters that are written with careful development. I really enjoyed the side characters and always love when a book doesn't just focus on the main protagonist(s) the entire plot. The magic is completely unique and like nothing I've ever read before. The two main POVs, Arcady and Everen, play off of each other so well and have a bit of anti-hero that you have to love. As weird as it sounds, Arcady and Everen were such a cool ship and the slow burn was everything! They had such a complex bond and the progression of their relationship is so well-written. I even really enjoyed the addition of the third POV, Sorin. It never felt like too many characters and made the collision of all the characters in the end more worthwhile. The ending was full of plot twists and leaves you hanging on the end of your seat...I cannot believe I'll have to wait for the next book to come out. It's definitely a trilogy I am excited to keep up with.

Extra points to the author for all the representation regarding gender!

The one small flaw I would say is that at first, the writing style was a bit hard for me to get into. The POVs are written differently, but once you realize who the characters are, the styles match them perfectly and help the story flow. If you can get over that hump in the beginning, you are in for a wild ride!

Thank you to Netgalley and DAW Books for the chance to read this in exchange for an honest review!

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