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adancewithbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
3.5
Thank you to DAW and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.
Beaulieu is a well known name in the fantasy genre, but I had yet to read a book by him. Starting with a book that has dragons in it, seemed like a good place to start.
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen lets us meet Rylan, the bastard son of a leader in the city that he lives in. A small time thief who gets asked to do something much bigger than he bargained for. Through Rylan we get a decent look at the world. He has one foot in the city and one foot in the Holt. We get to see both sides.
The world in this book is interesting. There are saints and legends from many generations passed that shaped the world, and also partially the current divide. These were real people with real magic. The dragons are a part of the world but just as there is a divide between the people, they divide the dragons. Some dragons are good while others get killed.
While this book nearly counts 500 pages, the story itself is very straightforward in that there really wasn't any surprise. The foreshadowing was not subtle and if you read a lot of fantasy you see most of the things coming from a mile away. My complaint is that while we spend a lot of time with Rylan, we get too little background on him. More on his interactions with his half siblings, his father, other dragons there. More about the dragon singing.
I think this book is very much a set up for the bigger plot that came forward at the end of the book. That we needed to get through this to get something much better in the next book.
That doesn't mean that this is a bad book. I enjoyed reading it for what it was. I liked Rylan and his bond with his dragon. I liked getting the bits and pieces of this world. Some of the side characters amused me. It just didn't ask a whole lot of me as reader. And sometimes that is fine too.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Blood, Torture, and Death
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