Reviews - The Rage of Dragons

3.52k reviews for:

The Rage of Dragons

Evan Winter

4.25 AVERAGE

polenbre's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

noah0hm's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring tense fast-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

monk326's review against another edition

5.0

WOW I don't normally read a lot of dragon fantasy books. But this one, wow, the fighting and battles started at the beginning and just kept on thru the whole book. I was wrapped up tight in it. Following along and not wanting to put it down. LOL trying to figure what took em so long to decide to read it.

nothingbutfantasyreads's review against another edition

5.0

This book is fantastic! I loved every minute of it. If you like fantasy, you have to read this.

at0m1c's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

h_s_bloom's review against another edition

2.5

adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Character ⭐⭐⭐
Plot ⭐⭐⭐
Pacing ⭐⭐
Writing Style ⭐⭐
Diversity ⭐⭐⭐

Overall Rating: 2.6/5 (rounded down to 2.5)

I'm not going to bother with a story blurb here as I'm sure readers can find that themselves. There isn't much to hate about this book, but there also isn't much for me to love here unfortunately. I'd say it's just below average. The most frustrating thing about RoD is that I can tell that Winters has really put some heart into this world, but it is told through the lense of probably one of the most narrow-minded teenage boys in the genre.

Character ⭐⭐⭐
The narrow-minded teenager in question, Tau, is the typical impoverished/untalented/'not special' boy you see in many fantasy stories. Winters does say in his author blurb that he specifically wanted to write a story so that his son could see people like himself in this fantasy hence the story being an African take on the genre. All that to say that I don't really take issue with settling on a genre staple when it comes to a character archetype, but Tau has some really incredible plot armor here. Tau DOES NOT LISTEN. Like ever. It is so incredibly frustrating to read because he also never really faces consequences or learns at all. Winters does a good job at showing how brutal this word and regime are, however, Tau is always conveniently omitted. I could stretch some disbelief here, but it is the only thing keeping this plot moving. I did love pretty much all of the side characters, but maybe that was because I found Tau so grating. Uduak, Zuri, and Hadith have my whole heart even if LoD wasn't for me ❤️

Plot ⭐⭐⭐
So this is a revenge plot which centers around

the murder of Taus father

in the early chapters. Normally I could get behind this but the evidence of this relationship is just not there? You meet this character sparingly in the beginning and you don't really develop any sort of attachment. Then, the event happens and we never really speak of him again? This seems less about revenge and more about Taus relentless desire to kill three specific people.

I need Tau to let me know WHAT about his father he misses to believe it. It's not enough that they are related, sorry.

Pacing ⭐⭐
The prologue was misleading and really should have been scrapped in editing. It goes back hundreds of years to the POV of the original colonizing queen who has dragons, ambition, etc... and then we switch to Tau. I think Winters saw the whole 'make your first chapter' grab them suggestion, but couldn't make something like that for Tau (telling) so had to rely on a flashback. Tau's story really takes an age to get off the ground and there are a few things that happen in his home village which SHOULD have consequences but never come up again? Maybe in book two I guess? It started to pick up for me at the 50% mark, but that's 250+ pages in and I really expect to be invested in under 100 pages.

Writing Style ⭐⭐
I think Winters is a fine writer and is able to convey things clearly enough. The fight scenes are better earlier in the book. Once Tau

learned how to fight with two swords

it's always just 'a flury of blades'. A HUGE issue I had with Winters' writing was his use of alternate POVs. We were primarily in Tau's head until randomly we would shoot off into someone else's so the reader could actually figure out what the hell was going on in the world because Tau was not listening or paying any attention. The alternative POVs were SO telly, it really made me think Winters did not trust his readers AT ALL to be able to work things out.

Diversity ⭐⭐⭐
So everyone here is African/African adjacent. Winters doed mention different (black) skin tones and hairstyles so not everyone is a monolith here and there is also a separate indigenous group. I gave LoD a three star here because we are really just in Tau's head so we don't see anything. I did catch some subtle signs which are confirmed in book two but they don't deserve to be counted for this books review.

Overall Rating: 2.6/5 (rounded down to 2.5)
So overall would I recommend this one? Honestly, there are so many great books I'm the genre, you could miss this one but I wouldn't try to talk anyone out of it either. I don't care enough to finish this series, but I'm glad that so many other folks seem to have loved it. Not for me!

Content Warnings