Scan barcode
A review by rubeusbeaky
House of Dragons by Jessica Cluess
1.0
Imagine watching "How to Train Your Dragon", but randomly, without warning, the movie cuts to some of the most controversial moments in Game of Thrones. This book ought to have come with a trigger warning. I almost chalked it up as a Did Not Finish after page 130, but I checked the Goodreads ratings to see if I should give the book a chance to redeem itself... I read to the end, but I feel like the odd reviewer out; this book failed on many levels with me.
For starters, the Switching Point of View Characters mechanic did not work in this book. Not to name drop, but when another famous dragon enthusiast, GRR Martin, switched perspectives, it was always to propel the action and the timeline forward. But this book will give the exact same scene, with all five protagonists present, and describe every gesture and dialogue, no surprises. Or worse, will have all five protagonists undergo the exact same activity, with the same motivation, but in /separate/ chapters, so you feel as if you're reading the same scene five times over. There is nothing gained by naming the chapter after one of the characters in the scene. And sometimes two chapters for the same character are back to back, leaving me wondering if the author even knows what a chapter is at all. If you're not going to switch perspectives, why not simply have a page break? It feels as though the book would have benefitted greatly from scrapping the mechanic, and simply swapping perspectives within a single chapter, each chapter being a scene.
Another nitpicky negative, this book barely "dragons" before page 300. The major selling point is supposed to be the dragons. It has "Dragons" in the title. But the dragons are more often treated like horses, just tethered and left behind while the humans have their misadventures. Yes, okay, I think there is supposed to be a metaphor somewhere in how each of the competitors behaves a bit like a dragon(?). But I do not feel the cast of heroes lives up to the promise in the title, because 3/5 of them do not want to be a part of this tournament. They try to flee, or they mope and resign themselves to losing/dying; they allow the plot to simply happen around them/to them. They are rather boring to read about. The tournament may push them from obstacle to obstacle, but the majority of characters don't really take agency until somewhere past page 350. That's a long time to wait for a cast to DO something, and to hope that the audience is enthralled simply because "Ooo, dragons!"
But my big concern is the tonal whiplash of this book. Spoilers and triggers ahead. Sometimes this book is for children, and it joyfully describes a dragon race resulting in a firebreathing tussle which totally doesn't burn the dragonriders to a crisp, aren't cartoon physics fun. And then suddenly, this book is for adults of a particular constitution, describing the public vivisection of a little girl, or a boy whose eyes melted, or a young woman who was raped by her liege lord. These more mature moments appear without lead-in, and without respect. These scenes are thrown in like paragraphs of characterization: She had red hair, grey eyes, and feared having molten lead dribbled into her eye sockets. There is no sense that this book is trying to create a macabre atmosphere, or carry a central theme about suffering and redemption, or teach its target audience about how to endure through trauma - nope, these scenes simply...are. They /are/ there.
And I can't even rightly say that the characters are motivated by their trauma, because their motivations and characterization change sentence to sentence! In one scene, a girl will be both meek and brazenly spiteful. Or another character will worship structure and lawfulness, and then burn down a town. The list is long, and easily visible in my highlights, bottom line being that even after 400+ pages, I'm not sure I really /know/ these characters.
Which brings me, I think, to my final problem with this book: Its inspirations were obvious, but it does not live up to its predecessors. There were obvious allusions to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Eragon, How to Train Your Dragon, etc... So many, that it feels like the author really enjoys dragons, and wanted to have a fantasy book... but got burnt out writing one. Nostalgia doesn't make a story. Everything feels unpolished, and just reminds me that I could be reading something better.
For starters, the Switching Point of View Characters mechanic did not work in this book. Not to name drop, but when another famous dragon enthusiast, GRR Martin, switched perspectives, it was always to propel the action and the timeline forward. But this book will give the exact same scene, with all five protagonists present, and describe every gesture and dialogue, no surprises. Or worse, will have all five protagonists undergo the exact same activity, with the same motivation, but in /separate/ chapters, so you feel as if you're reading the same scene five times over. There is nothing gained by naming the chapter after one of the characters in the scene. And sometimes two chapters for the same character are back to back, leaving me wondering if the author even knows what a chapter is at all. If you're not going to switch perspectives, why not simply have a page break? It feels as though the book would have benefitted greatly from scrapping the mechanic, and simply swapping perspectives within a single chapter, each chapter being a scene.
Another nitpicky negative, this book barely "dragons" before page 300. The major selling point is supposed to be the dragons. It has "Dragons" in the title. But the dragons are more often treated like horses, just tethered and left behind while the humans have their misadventures. Yes, okay, I think there is supposed to be a metaphor somewhere in how each of the competitors behaves a bit like a dragon(?). But I do not feel the cast of heroes lives up to the promise in the title, because 3/5 of them do not want to be a part of this tournament. They try to flee, or they mope and resign themselves to losing/dying; they allow the plot to simply happen around them/to them. They are rather boring to read about. The tournament may push them from obstacle to obstacle, but the majority of characters don't really take agency until somewhere past page 350. That's a long time to wait for a cast to DO something, and to hope that the audience is enthralled simply because "Ooo, dragons!"
But my big concern is the tonal whiplash of this book. Spoilers and triggers ahead. Sometimes this book is for children, and it joyfully describes a dragon race resulting in a firebreathing tussle which totally doesn't burn the dragonriders to a crisp, aren't cartoon physics fun. And then suddenly, this book is for adults of a particular constitution, describing the public vivisection of a little girl, or a boy whose eyes melted, or a young woman who was raped by her liege lord. These more mature moments appear without lead-in, and without respect. These scenes are thrown in like paragraphs of characterization: She had red hair, grey eyes, and feared having molten lead dribbled into her eye sockets. There is no sense that this book is trying to create a macabre atmosphere, or carry a central theme about suffering and redemption, or teach its target audience about how to endure through trauma - nope, these scenes simply...are. They /are/ there.
And I can't even rightly say that the characters are motivated by their trauma, because their motivations and characterization change sentence to sentence! In one scene, a girl will be both meek and brazenly spiteful. Or another character will worship structure and lawfulness, and then burn down a town. The list is long, and easily visible in my highlights, bottom line being that even after 400+ pages, I'm not sure I really /know/ these characters.
Which brings me, I think, to my final problem with this book: Its inspirations were obvious, but it does not live up to its predecessors. There were obvious allusions to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Eragon, How to Train Your Dragon, etc... So many, that it feels like the author really enjoys dragons, and wanted to have a fantasy book... but got burnt out writing one. Nostalgia doesn't make a story. Everything feels unpolished, and just reminds me that I could be reading something better.