A review by zoeislostinabook
Wrath of the Dragons by Olivia Rose Darling

4.0

I absolutely adored Fear the Flames and have been impatiently waiting for the sequel since it was announced, so I was unbelievably excited to get access to this as an eARC. I should warn you that it starts off quite slow. The first half of this book sees us get a lot of the politics and world building that were perhaps less well-developed in FTF. FTF was very focused on Elowen and her battle to get back to her dragons, where WOTD expands the world and introduces us to the wider consequences of her bond. While I think the need to explain this did lead to some pacing issues, I appreciated it as it truly allowed me to situate myself within the world I was reading about. We got new kingdoms and new characters, and I’m excited to see how these individuals fit with our core group of five from book one. 

WOTD also sees a change in the relationship between Elowen and Cayden. It’s still incredibly intense and there’s a lot to unpick emotionally. I did struggle initially seeing the difficulties they were facing as that wasn’t necessarily my takeaway from the first book, but I think we saw a real development of their relationship. In particular, I loved getting Cayden’s perspective in this book. Cayden’s devotion really shines through in his chapters and it really demonstrated the growth of their relationship by showing it from both sides. This relationship really does take centre-stage in this book so we saw less of the friendships, but I do have some ideas for how the group might branch out in future books that I’m intrigued about. 

We saw a lot more of the dragons in this book and actually quite a bit of the early information sharing was to do with the dragons. This did feel a little bit info-dumpy but it was useful to help get a sense of their different personalities and how they fit together in their bond with Elowen. Nonetheless, I really would have liked to see more of the dragons and Elowen’s relationship with them. We heard a lot about how strong that bond was but I think more could have been done to really show this. 

The second half of the book picked up a lot in the pacing, and this is where it really invested me. There was action, there was tension and I found myself unable to put the book down as we reached the climactic ending. And wow that ending. Under no circumstances did I see that coming at all. Book three could be going in an interesting and very unexpected direction so I’m intrigued to see what’s next for these characters. 

Thank you to Zaffre and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review.