Take a photo of a barcode or cover
lucky_bucket 's review for:
The Rage of Dragons
by Evan Winter
DNF 47%
I was intrigued, like most, with the idea of an African-inspired fantasy, and the little bits of the plot in reviews got me excited - Revenge story! Common man taking on the established world order! Political Intrigue! Dragons! It fell flat in the execution. What went wrong?
- The entire story (as far as I read) was a long training montage. It was like watching Rocky or Karate Kid training sequences amped up to Gladiator levels of violence. And then it went on for 200 pages. I like a good fight sequence, but I don't care to read pages and pages on the angle of a sword swing. To me this read like a myopic high school football player view of the world - practice every day like a maniac and I WILL GET EVERYTHING.
- The main character is a single-minded angerbot. He experiences no growth (except gaining new fighting techniques I guess?). He makes stupid decisions and doesn't learn from them. There's no appeal to him and I struggled to root for his success, because what would he learn from it?
- There are no women. Well, technically there are, but the only interesting one is limited to the prologue. The "love interest" only exists as a foil for the main character and she has no depth or purpose otherwise.
- The challenge of a fight (and there are TONS of fights) seemed to be entirely derived from the physical size of the opponent. I can only assume that the author wanted to really emphasize the underdog-ness of the main, and thus opponents are varying degrees of huge-enormous-gargantuan, and all rippling with muscle. I get that physical mass is critically important in hand-to-hand combat, but the repetitive descriptions of how big the "other guys" always seemed to be bored me.
- Titles and proper names were confusing. Others have mentioned this so I hate to pile on, but I couldn't keep track of what all the officer, noble, or whatever titles meant.
- There are hardly any dragons. They're in the prologue and maybe a two or three other pages. For a book with dragons in the title, it's a bit disingenuous. And then the magic system - it seems really cool at first, but in the context of the story magic becomes another separator for the main, another way he and other common men are held back, treated like nobodies. Which leads me to the worst part...
- It's all a bully comeuppance fantasy. The caste system, magic, physical presence of individuals, it all exists to bully the main down. I suppose so when he climbs above it all it's more dramatic? The non-stop bullying is ridiculous.
- It's culturally icky. The main is part of a culture that invaded and conquered another land, and characters repeatedly refer to the natives as "savages" and the like. Maybe this was intended to be ironic, some sort role reversal to real life history, but it just felt tropey and tone-deaf to me.
The only reason I can think of for this book to have so many 5 star reviews is reader wish fulfillment. We've all been there - nobody thinks we can do it, we're not good enough, we'll never make it, the deck is entirely stacked against us (or so we imagine). But through sheer will and stick-to-itiveness we rise above all the haters. There's really nothing else in this book, so if that's your thing, good for you. It's not for me.
I was intrigued, like most, with the idea of an African-inspired fantasy, and the little bits of the plot in reviews got me excited - Revenge story! Common man taking on the established world order! Political Intrigue! Dragons! It fell flat in the execution. What went wrong?
- The entire story (as far as I read) was a long training montage. It was like watching Rocky or Karate Kid training sequences amped up to Gladiator levels of violence. And then it went on for 200 pages. I like a good fight sequence, but I don't care to read pages and pages on the angle of a sword swing. To me this read like a myopic high school football player view of the world - practice every day like a maniac and I WILL GET EVERYTHING.
- The main character is a single-minded angerbot. He experiences no growth (except gaining new fighting techniques I guess?). He makes stupid decisions and doesn't learn from them. There's no appeal to him and I struggled to root for his success, because what would he learn from it?
- There are no women. Well, technically there are, but the only interesting one is limited to the prologue. The "love interest" only exists as a foil for the main character and she has no depth or purpose otherwise.
- The challenge of a fight (and there are TONS of fights) seemed to be entirely derived from the physical size of the opponent. I can only assume that the author wanted to really emphasize the underdog-ness of the main, and thus opponents are varying degrees of huge-enormous-gargantuan, and all rippling with muscle. I get that physical mass is critically important in hand-to-hand combat, but the repetitive descriptions of how big the "other guys" always seemed to be bored me.
- Titles and proper names were confusing. Others have mentioned this so I hate to pile on, but I couldn't keep track of what all the officer, noble, or whatever titles meant.
- There are hardly any dragons. They're in the prologue and maybe a two or three other pages. For a book with dragons in the title, it's a bit disingenuous. And then the magic system - it seems really cool at first, but in the context of the story magic becomes another separator for the main, another way he and other common men are held back, treated like nobodies. Which leads me to the worst part...
- It's all a bully comeuppance fantasy. The caste system, magic, physical presence of individuals, it all exists to bully the main down. I suppose so when he climbs above it all it's more dramatic? The non-stop bullying is ridiculous.
- It's culturally icky. The main is part of a culture that invaded and conquered another land, and characters repeatedly refer to the natives as "savages" and the like. Maybe this was intended to be ironic, some sort role reversal to real life history, but it just felt tropey and tone-deaf to me.
The only reason I can think of for this book to have so many 5 star reviews is reader wish fulfillment. We've all been there - nobody thinks we can do it, we're not good enough, we'll never make it, the deck is entirely stacked against us (or so we imagine). But through sheer will and stick-to-itiveness we rise above all the haters. There's really nothing else in this book, so if that's your thing, good for you. It's not for me.