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alibrareads 's review for:
Blazewrath Games
by Amparo Ortiz
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This read a little young for me, but it was a fun story! I don’t care about sports, but make it with dragons and I’m all in! You can feel the pride and love for Puerto Rico from the author throughout the book, and it was hard not to feel that secondhand through Lana! The worldbuilding is pretty basic, just enough info and background to be able to tell the story. I didn’t know that in addition to dragons, there is also magic in the style of Harry Potter: using wands to perform nebulous magic, and there being both magical and nonmagical people (called Regulars), though in this book they peacefully coexist. That is probably part of why this read as young to me, in addition to the way this was written in the voice of a teenage girl. There were a bunch of reveals around the middle that came all at once and were pretty intense and cool!
Victoria was infuriating, kind of unnecessarily so? I guess every team story deserves that one teammate who is a spiteful jerk and dislikes the new person until the very end, but it was almost over the top how single-minded and scornful she was. Lots of queer representation in the book, and the cast is very diverse!
The sport of Blazewrath is cool in concept, though at times I remembered that these were young people riding dragons that were literally shooting fire at/ramming into each other and I was like… hmmm, no way these kids wouldn’t be incinerated or squashed or thrown off or something like that. But it’s fantasy so it’s whatever really!
There was a bit of a weird reveal at the end, where a conclusion was reached, then it was a false alarm, but then it turned out the original conclusion was actually true all along?! It felt kind of weird and anticlimactic, or like a bad attempt at a red herring? That wasn’t actually a red herring?
There were also just a lot of things going on plot-wise, at times my brain couldn’t pinpoint what the primary plot line/focus was supposed to be. But I just kind of went with it. Parts of this were entertaining and cool, others felt a little convoluted. But the dragon sport was still neat!
Victoria was infuriating, kind of unnecessarily so? I guess every team story deserves that one teammate who is a spiteful jerk and dislikes the new person until the very end, but it was almost over the top how single-minded and scornful she was. Lots of queer representation in the book, and the cast is very diverse!
The sport of Blazewrath is cool in concept, though at times I remembered that these were young people riding dragons that were literally shooting fire at/ramming into each other and I was like… hmmm, no way these kids wouldn’t be incinerated or squashed or thrown off or something like that. But it’s fantasy so it’s whatever really!
There was a bit of a weird reveal at the end, where a conclusion was reached, then it was a false alarm, but then it turned out the original conclusion was actually true all along?! It felt kind of weird and anticlimactic, or like a bad attempt at a red herring? That wasn’t actually a red herring?
There were also just a lot of things going on plot-wise, at times my brain couldn’t pinpoint what the primary plot line/focus was supposed to be. But I just kind of went with it. Parts of this were entertaining and cool, others felt a little convoluted. But the dragon sport was still neat!