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yonnyan 's review for:
Dragon Champion
by E.E. Knight
I originally picked this novel up in November, but as I fell into a reading slump, I placed it aside. I decided to return to it as my reading slump began to dwindle away, but ultimately I suspect now that this book was the cause of my November slump.
I felt really drawn towards the story when I initially began it. Auron’s hatching and upwards until the very first traumatic experiences he undergoes were exceptionally compelling. This book was my very first time reading from the first-person perspective of a dragon, which felt quite original and refreshing. Learning about their physiology and behaviour patterns made for some fascinating stuff. However, as Auron continues onwards with his journey, I found myself quickly losing focus and feeling immensely bored; the book became a struggle.
He goes through some really terrible things and about one-third of the way through, I began to wonder if the novel was just going to be one depressing and tragic thing after another. The challenges became repetitive and uncomfortably despairing. When he partners up with a different race of animals, their strange interactions finally brought some of the plot progression back to life. But as that arc ended and Auron moved on to formulate friendships with a humanoid race of people, everything just fell apart for me.
This second encounter and partnership situation was excruciatingly tedious. It dragged on and on for many pages when in actuality it could’ve been wrapped up within a chapter or so, especially given how long each chapter is and the amount of content covered within each chapter. The descriptions of these people’s’ buildings and specific settings relating to them in general felt like massive walls of information that wasn’t incorporated into the story, but rather sandwiched around it. The book told us where and what was happening instead of immersing us into it to fluidly. To be perfectly blunt, it substantially lacked atmosphere, which in turn made me inconceivably bored out of my mind as it’s a characteristic that I positively adore in fantasy narratives.
I found myself falling into another miserable slump again and it was at this point that I decided to set the book aside. I was eagerly hoping to enjoy Dragon Champion as I love fantasy of this calibre and the premise was quite promising. Nonetheless, the title simply ended up not being my cup of chai.
I do want to mention that the meticulous attention to detail, in conjunction with the weaving of fantastical facets and scientific elements were very promising. With a more refined touch and more cohesive building of atmosphere, it could make for fantastic storytelling. It just wasn’t the case with this book, unfortunately.
2 scales outta 5!
I felt really drawn towards the story when I initially began it. Auron’s hatching and upwards until the very first traumatic experiences he undergoes were exceptionally compelling. This book was my very first time reading from the first-person perspective of a dragon, which felt quite original and refreshing. Learning about their physiology and behaviour patterns made for some fascinating stuff. However, as Auron continues onwards with his journey, I found myself quickly losing focus and feeling immensely bored; the book became a struggle.
He goes through some really terrible things and about one-third of the way through, I began to wonder if the novel was just going to be one depressing and tragic thing after another. The challenges became repetitive and uncomfortably despairing. When he partners up with a different race of animals, their strange interactions finally brought some of the plot progression back to life. But as that arc ended and Auron moved on to formulate friendships with a humanoid race of people, everything just fell apart for me.
This second encounter and partnership situation was excruciatingly tedious. It dragged on and on for many pages when in actuality it could’ve been wrapped up within a chapter or so, especially given how long each chapter is and the amount of content covered within each chapter. The descriptions of these people’s’ buildings and specific settings relating to them in general felt like massive walls of information that wasn’t incorporated into the story, but rather sandwiched around it. The book told us where and what was happening instead of immersing us into it to fluidly. To be perfectly blunt, it substantially lacked atmosphere, which in turn made me inconceivably bored out of my mind as it’s a characteristic that I positively adore in fantasy narratives.
I found myself falling into another miserable slump again and it was at this point that I decided to set the book aside. I was eagerly hoping to enjoy Dragon Champion as I love fantasy of this calibre and the premise was quite promising. Nonetheless, the title simply ended up not being my cup of chai.
I do want to mention that the meticulous attention to detail, in conjunction with the weaving of fantastical facets and scientific elements were very promising. With a more refined touch and more cohesive building of atmosphere, it could make for fantastic storytelling. It just wasn’t the case with this book, unfortunately.
2 scales outta 5!