Review: Firebolt - Adrienne Woods
Series: The Dragonian #1
Rating {★★★★☆}
YA Fantasy
Published September 19th 2014 by Fire Quill Publishing
Source: Fire Quill Publishing via NetGalley
Dragons. Right. Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales, and sixteen-year old Elena Watkins was no different.
Until the night a fairy tale killed her father.
Now Elena’s in a new world, and a new school. The cutest guy around may be an evil dragon, a Prince wants Elena’s heart, and a long dead sorcerer may be waking up to kill her. Oh. And the only way Elena’s going to graduate is on the back of a dragon of her own.
Teenage girls don’t believe in fairy tales. Now it’s time for Elena to believe – in herself.
I am so thrilled that I found this series. What an entertaining read this was for me and even though the writing isn't perfect I got sucked in within the first couple of chapters and was reading more for enjoyment than from a critical point of view.
Elena is a fairly normal sixteen year old girl - or so she thinks. Her paranoid father has uprooted them every three months (for reasons unknown) since she was born so there's always been that aspect of her life that wasn't exactly normal - living on the run. What she didn't realise is that her father was actually a dragon. A real live (and massive) dragon. In this fantasy world, dragons are able to shift into humanoid form. There are two types of dragon's - metallic and chromium. The chromium dragons are... not as nice as metallic dragons and have, in the past, given all dragons a bad name and dragons were hunted by humans to the point of an all out war between the two species. The slaughter of the dragon's continued until a King of Paegeia fell in love with a dragon and they discovered that the metallic dragon's didn't pose a threat and that the dragon's could be ridden. The rider is called the Dragonian and each dragon can be claimed by a single Dragonian. An enchanted wall was created between the human world and the realm where humans coexist with dragon's and magic (Paegeia),but not to protect the humans - to protect the world of magic from those that wanted to harness and abuse it for themselves.
The entire world is complex and fairly well thought out and written. Some of the dragons (mainly the chromiums) have specific powers like breathing fire or spitting acid, healing etc.
There's far more I could go into but suffice to say it's an interesting concept and Woods managed a balancing act of fleshing out the plot, keeping the action up and making the entire story flow well from start to finish.
This book is definitely YA, and is centred around a group of teenagers that act fairly true to their age, so if you're an adult and/or are expecting or wanting the kids to think/act more mature than they are then this probably isn't for you.
As I have mentioned, it isn't perfect. Sometimes some of the plot devices feel a little clunky and there's a certain air of predictability about this, although not a lot is revealed within the first book. There's quite a lot of teenage drama and blushing involved, as well as a few points where I actually was jarred out of my 'zone' and thought really? but I was truly entertained and let myself get lost in the book. Before I knew it, it was all over and I was reading an excerpt from book 2. I suddenly realised that and I am going to need to purchase the next book in this series as soon as possible!
If this book even remotely interests you, try it! It is currently only 0.99c on the Kobo Store (as of the date of this review).
Thank you NetGalley and Fire Quill Publishing for this opportunity to read and review this book
