Dragon Champion

I've finished reading this book for a second time with intention of re-reading the series (which I abandoned around book three in 2015 when other interests took time away from reading), and I can honestly say I'm not entirely sure how I feel. In many ways, it's like watching an old favourite cartoon from childhood and realizing it doesn't quite live up to all the hype my younger self built around the memories. In fact, several scenes I could have sworn existed simply didn't and I don't know yet if those are memories from the other books in the series or just my imagination having filled in many of the gaps toward the book's end. Perhaps it's a combination of both.

When I first read this book, I didn't write reviews and ignoring things like small, factual flubs and typos was much easier. This would have easily been a five-star book at the time, I believe, and it's still four stars because I enjoy the world and the characters quite a bit. However, it has flaws and frankly the rating only comes out so high because I was in the right mood for a book full of action and gore and darkness.

For those curious: I do indeed mean gore and darkness. We're talking about depictions of pus and blood and mutilation and dismemberment and extreme violence toward humanoids and sentient animals alike. We're talking living animals turned into bombs and heartless cruelty toward animals which can express their horror in the language of the hominids who ignore their discontentment and continue to mistreat them. Beyond that, there's quite a bit of rape - some of it the main character turns a blind eye toward because he isn't particularly concerned with the welfare of the humanoid species - and even an implication that a small girl would have been victimized if she hadn't been carefully hidden away from the monsters who conquered her people. There are strippers and prostitutes and sex slaves and even female dragons chained down, muzzled, and forced to bare eggs from many different males - eggs which are stolen from them by humans. And there are also dragons who murder each other after hatching and mother dragons who crush their fertilized eggs just to spare the younglings within from being turned into slaves like themselves.

On top of this all, we have misogyny that runs deep in all the hominid societies and the species of dragons. This is called out, sometimes, with the hominids but is just accepted as how things are with the dragons because ‘instincts' and such. But do instincts to mate and breed and kill challenging males require that all female dragons have the same exact colour scales (while males come in a variety of patterns) and care primarily about raising their own clutches of eggs and little else...? Does the mating instinct of dragons really require that a male who reaches maturity suddenly start referring to a female human ally as having the strong, lusty scent of women that makes him jealous of her husband, his friend, to the point he briefly considers killing the man? I think not, and I think it's a very unfortunate choice the author made which does ultimately detract from the story in many places. This is one of the reasons I can't give this book a glowing review which I may have in the past.

The other reasons? Well, I have a physical paperback copy I purchased used many years ago, so I can't say with certainty if all these errors still exist in the current format. However, the book I read contains a plethora of typos ranging from missing words to improper homonyms to misplaced apostrophes... all the way to factual errors. For example, a scaleless dragon looks at the light shining off his own scales in one point and dragons with scales are referred to has having shining skin. Likewise, it seems the author forgot halfway through the book that dragons have multiple hearts and then remembered toward the end. There's also a very annoying tendencey to swap to using ‘it' as a pronoun for (fully sentient, identified as male) dragons who get into conflict with the main character - perhaps as a lazy writing crutch to avoid the mix-up of ‘he' being used to refer to two characters. I'm not sure why, because even amateur fanfic writers had learned how to handle multiple male characters interacting within a sentence by 2005, when Dragon Champion was published.

I'm also not entirely certain who the target demographic for this book actually is. Like I mentioned, there's some really dark stuff in the story and it doesn't all feel particularly appropriate for middlegrade readers, but the repetitive sentence structures (He [did this]. He [did that]. She [did the other thing].) and sudden scene transitions felt very much fitting for that reading level whereas the contents of the plot felt more appropriate for young adult and older audiences. Luckily, I'm not that bothered by such things once I get into a story, and I ultimately got used to it.

In addition: the pacing in the first third is slow to the point of boredom at times (after the first chapter, which jumps straight into action), but things move at an appreciable speed and the plot gets interesting in the middle third. By the final third, things are interesting... but the pacing is too fast and it feels as if the author were rushing to meet either a deadline or a page count limit. Whereas interactions were excruciatingly dwelled-upon in earlier chapters, they're fleeting and sometimes even skipped entirely in the later chapters.

I know this review so far makes it seem like I should have given the book a far lower rating, but honestly I still enjoyed it a lot. I liked seeing the gritty nature of dragons as imagined by this author and seeing glimpses into the foolish prejudices of each species causing irreparable harm for themselves while they tried to destroy everything around them. I loved the wolf pack and was able to find amusement in the inclusion of dolphins though it felt very much out of place. I felt emotional for certain characters, enraged by others, and actually invested in the story of the grey dragon's life. Even when the book dragged, I wanted to see what happened next so I pushed forward. And when things were being skipped over too quickly, I felt a little cheated because I was so invested and wanted more of the story.

The journey is worthwhile, despite its flaws. The ending is... not great and ties back into the gripes I have about misogyny and sexism, but I suppose it makes sense enough for the conditions in which the female character was raised. (I can't say more without it being a major spoiler.) Overall, I've ended this book with an eagerness to move forward to the next installment of the series. I just hope that one goes a slightly different direction, because for as much as I enjoy some darkness in the things I read I'm beginning to starve for some hopefulness or lightheartedness.

(Warning: Some slight spoilers ahead!)

As a lover of dragons and fantasy, this book immediately caught my interest. I pretty much love anything fantasy-related. The only problem is that fantasy can be a pretty “cut-copy” kind of genre. A lot of authors stick to the same general layout when they write the world and characters for their books. It seems to always be the same: The magical elves, the mountain dwarves, and the mortal humans. Dragons are usually the big-bad monsters or the wise-good reptiles. So, when I picked up this book, I was a little cautious. I wasn't sure if it would end up being just another samey fantasy book or a hidden gem. But I was still eager to try it out. In the end, even if I don't particularly like it, I still get some enjoyment just because I like reading about faraway fantasy lands filled with magic and magical creatures.

So, is this book one of those hidden gems? No, not really. After reading it, I can sum up my overall feelings with a big “meh”.

I thought it was really cool to have the dragon as a main character, though I feel the potential was wasted. Hearing the small tid-bits of dragon culture and lives was pretty interesting. I think the book should have been more focused on that. Maybe going more into the history of the different dragons and their culture and languages. The history of the world was nice, but nothing was was super unique or memorable. I guess for me, there were tiny pieces of interesting parts of history. For example, I thought the concept of having the dragon living and being raised by wolves was very interesting! Overall though, the book just isn't that captivating. It gets so boring at times, honestly. Nothing really caught my attention or really inspired me to keep going. The dragon's journey wasn't that harrowing or compelling. It's not like where Frodo has to take the One Ring to Mount Doom or the entire world will plunge into an era of chaos. Nothing feels frantic or energetic. Sometimes, it just feels that “this dragon is going here and here just because he wants to.”

I think that maybe if the journey had more feeling or had more at stake, it would be more inspiring to read on about. The beginning pieces are there, but they need to be emphasized a bit more. If Auron was the last of his kind and had to find the fabled DragonLand (or something similar to that), then it should feel like that. Auron should be thinking about how he holds the key to his species survival! Or if it had a more “fish out of water” type of feel. Auron could be a dragon that knows next-to-nothing about the world below and is forced to retreat after a giant dragon war or something like that. He has to survive in environments he has never seen before and interact with creatures he didn't know existed in order to get back to the dragon lands. As I said before, it starts out trying to give this kind of feel, but it falls short. As it is now, it's just...eh. Kind of boring.

Also, it doesn't really help that Auron isn't a very interesting character in my opinion. Having a dragon (who was partially raised by wolves) sounds like it would make for a great narrating voice! Instead, I feel that if you took Auron out and plopped in a human, elf, dwarf, etc., it wouldn't have much of an impact. Having Auron make observations in a more dragon-perspective from his culture and up-bringing would have made it more interesting to read about. Also, Auron didn't feel like he made any huge character developments. He is traveling through a world entirely new to him, and it doesn't seem to have had any effect on him at all.

With all that said, there were some parts of the book I really did like. As I said before, showing the lifestyle of dragons and some of their culture was something I enjoyed reading a lot. I personally liked the explanation that the reason dragons hoard treasure such as jewels and coins (having to eat to them in order to make their scales hard). That was an interesting twist! There were a few moments in the book that I liked and wished were expanded upon or had more of an impact on Auron / the story (such as living with wolves).

Dragon Champion isn't a bad book in my opinion, just one that's...okay. I still went through it and didn't mind it too much, but it fell short. It is a book with some interesting bits to it. If you like fantasy (and dragons!) books, I would still recommend that you at least take a peek at it and see if you like it. If you can get past the flaws and enjoy it, it's not a bad book at all and can be an enjoyable read.