Dragonwatch: Return of the Dragon Slayers
May 19, 2022 15:07:20 GMT -5
Post by ✯~Rippleshadow~✯ on May 19, 2022 15:07:20 GMT -5
Warning: Spoilers for the Fablehaven/Dragonwatch series
What's up people. Time for another round of Ripple Reviews! But this time it's the Scathing Edition.
Apparently this book has like a 4.9 out of 5 star average rating online, which I don't understand. My review is not going to be that nice. When I first read Fablehaven as a teenager, I absolutely loved it. And when I heard the author was writing a sequel series, Dragonwatch, I was thrilled. And I genuinely enjoyed the first 3 books.
I'm not sure if I became jaded and unable to love things or if the books genuinely got worse, but books 4 and 5 were just... not good. This review is fresh off the grill seeing as how I just finished the final entry to this beloved series about 30 minutes ago. So grab your forks and dig in.
Plot: 3/10
Am I being generous here? I can't tell. I'm not going to go into great detail about the pacing issues, but there were A LOT. Goodness gracious. There were so many things happening in this book and yet I felt emotionally invested in none of it. The main characters finish a task or accomplish a feat in every single chapter that feels like each one should have required a book on its own to complete. It felt like an entire series condensed into the most bare-bones rendition of what it could have been. So basically, there was way too much going on and little emotional payoff.
My other complaint is that one of the biggest subplots in this book felt like a re-skin of the plot of Fablehaven book 5: the main characters have to race against time to track down some extremely hidden powerful people before it's too late. Unfortunately in RotDS, the execution is not great. I don't even know what to say about this. Why was it so easy to complete this quest? The main characters had to accomplish so many things in this book, there was no room for them to face any real trials. They just breezed from one task to the next.
It gets points because Raxtus is a good boy whom I love, and there was still a part of me that was curious to get to the ending. I mean, I did finish it after all.
Characters: 2/10
I don't know if this is just me, but it felt like nobody had much of a personality in this book. Honestly you could have replaced any character at any moment with another character and it would have not made a difference in this dialogue. Seriously everyone was just plot devices.
In previous entries in the series, Seth was annoying because he kept making mistakes. Seth no longer acts like that, but this is much worse. He now has wings that instinctively know what to do (i.e. he can dodge anything while flying, or swat away someone who is sneaking up behind him), as well as a sword that instinctively knows where to cut enemies. I think I never understood the phrase mary-sue until I read this book. But I understand now, and I don't like it. Literally Seth can just do pretty much anything and succeed and I don't feel any kind of tension.
In fact, he did so much stuff in this book that it kind of felt like Kendra (one of the protags) was no longer necessary.
Kendra's character arc is just awful too. Her role in this book is basically.... miss her "boyfriend" and learn how to cast light beams. Also she is like 16 and her boyfriend is a unicorn that has been alive for an extremely long time so that's kinda sketchy. There was also a moment where one of the villains said he wanted her to marry him and that just came out of nowhere and went absolutely nowhere and left me reeling like a fishing pole in a tar pit (i don't know what that means).
Sighs. I can't talk about this anymore. It's too sad.
Writing Style: 6/10
Ignoring the pacing since I included that in the plot section, this book reads much like any other Brandon Mull book in terms of style, but lacking flavor. It's an easy read meant for primary school kids. Am I just too old for this?? Is there something wrong with me?
??
Re-readability: 1/10
I'm not doing this again unless my memory is wiped and I forget that I read it.
Overall, this ending badly needs a fix-it. If you like easily palatable fantasy books, read Fablehaven and stop there. Or if you're less picky than I am, read Dragonwatch as well. But don't say I didn't warn you.... *fades into the darkness*
What's up people. Time for another round of Ripple Reviews! But this time it's the Scathing Edition.
Apparently this book has like a 4.9 out of 5 star average rating online, which I don't understand. My review is not going to be that nice. When I first read Fablehaven as a teenager, I absolutely loved it. And when I heard the author was writing a sequel series, Dragonwatch, I was thrilled. And I genuinely enjoyed the first 3 books.
I'm not sure if I became jaded and unable to love things or if the books genuinely got worse, but books 4 and 5 were just... not good. This review is fresh off the grill seeing as how I just finished the final entry to this beloved series about 30 minutes ago. So grab your forks and dig in.
Plot: 3/10
Am I being generous here? I can't tell. I'm not going to go into great detail about the pacing issues, but there were A LOT. Goodness gracious. There were so many things happening in this book and yet I felt emotionally invested in none of it. The main characters finish a task or accomplish a feat in every single chapter that feels like each one should have required a book on its own to complete. It felt like an entire series condensed into the most bare-bones rendition of what it could have been. So basically, there was way too much going on and little emotional payoff.
My other complaint is that one of the biggest subplots in this book felt like a re-skin of the plot of Fablehaven book 5: the main characters have to race against time to track down some extremely hidden powerful people before it's too late. Unfortunately in RotDS, the execution is not great. I don't even know what to say about this. Why was it so easy to complete this quest? The main characters had to accomplish so many things in this book, there was no room for them to face any real trials. They just breezed from one task to the next.
It gets points because Raxtus is a good boy whom I love, and there was still a part of me that was curious to get to the ending. I mean, I did finish it after all.
Characters: 2/10
I don't know if this is just me, but it felt like nobody had much of a personality in this book. Honestly you could have replaced any character at any moment with another character and it would have not made a difference in this dialogue. Seriously everyone was just plot devices.
In previous entries in the series, Seth was annoying because he kept making mistakes. Seth no longer acts like that, but this is much worse. He now has wings that instinctively know what to do (i.e. he can dodge anything while flying, or swat away someone who is sneaking up behind him), as well as a sword that instinctively knows where to cut enemies. I think I never understood the phrase mary-sue until I read this book. But I understand now, and I don't like it. Literally Seth can just do pretty much anything and succeed and I don't feel any kind of tension.
In fact, he did so much stuff in this book that it kind of felt like Kendra (one of the protags) was no longer necessary.
Kendra's character arc is just awful too. Her role in this book is basically.... miss her "boyfriend" and learn how to cast light beams. Also she is like 16 and her boyfriend is a unicorn that has been alive for an extremely long time so that's kinda sketchy. There was also a moment where one of the villains said he wanted her to marry him and that just came out of nowhere and went absolutely nowhere and left me reeling like a fishing pole in a tar pit (i don't know what that means).
Sighs. I can't talk about this anymore. It's too sad.
Writing Style: 6/10
Ignoring the pacing since I included that in the plot section, this book reads much like any other Brandon Mull book in terms of style, but lacking flavor. It's an easy read meant for primary school kids. Am I just too old for this?? Is there something wrong with me?
??Re-readability: 1/10
I'm not doing this again unless my memory is wiped and I forget that I read it.
Overall, this ending badly needs a fix-it. If you like easily palatable fantasy books, read Fablehaven and stop there. Or if you're less picky than I am, read Dragonwatch as well. But don't say I didn't warn you.... *fades into the darkness*
