Dragon’s Future (MMGM)

Title: Dragon’s Future (Dragon’s Courage #1)
Author: Kandi J. Wyatt
Publisher: Booktrope
Publication Date: 2015
Page Count: 260 (PDF file)
Age Recommendation: 12
How I Came Across The Book: Review request! Thank you!

What would you give to soar with dragons?

Every child of Woolpren dreams of being a dragon rider, but few are chosen. Twins Ruskya & Duskya are selected as children to join this elite group, leaving their home and all that is familiar to train for their new lives.

 Fast forward fifteen years–dragons are becoming extinct and riders are rare. When Ruskya learns of a plot that could destroy the remaining dragon population, he and his friends must fight for their dragons’ future.

 Join Ruskya on his quest of courage and friendship in this young YA series being hailed as a thrilling ride. ~ From the publisher

I’ve probably mentioned this before but I love dragons. A lot. Basically anything that has to do with dragons is almost guaranteed a Sue Stamp of Approval. So it was a bit of a surprise when this book didn’t cut it. The main point of this series seemed to be the dragon and its rider, right?

Not really. It starts off pretty good. The prologue did throw me off because I didn’t know who was who and what was going on. The first half was also fairly decent. Although wayyy too many characters were thrown in at the beginning and I didn’t know who was who. Also the dragon’s names were really confusing. They all seemed to start with W and I couldn’t keep track of them. For a while I let this go because maybe it was tradition? But then a whole bunch of other dragons with names that started with a different letter of the alphabet entered the story and so the names with the W seemed to have no real purpose except for confusion.

Everything Happened Too Fast. We started off when the MC was ten years old and then there’s a fifteen year time-skip to when he’s 25? We skipped over ALL of his training. I think this was the most important part of his growth and where we could’ve bonded with him and the characters. Unfortunately we skipped over this part in his life where he goes from a boy to a ‘man’. I couldn’t bring myself to care about him in the rest of the book because I never was given the chance to sympathize with him or relate to him at all.

I was super excited to read about the dragon riders. What cool stuff did they do? Did any of the dragons have special powers? But as far as I could tell they really served no purpose and did nothing at all. They trained to fight but they never fought other dragons or people. They just were…there.

Plus, some people became dragon riders with no training and they were just as good as those with years of experience? That was really weird to me. Plus there was so much that was like: “We never knew about this!” And I was like: “Um, how? You guys have been around for hundreds of years and you’re telling me no one has ever looked for [redacted] or tested [redacted]? That’s pretty unlikely.”

Then there was this whole thing involving the Plant (which had more of a personality than the main character) and somehow it could make people pregnant with twins? It was super weird.

I wish that some of the other characters, mainly Ruskya’s sister, Duskya had a bigger role in the story. After all, they’re twins with a super strong bond? They also only had each other during their dragon training (aside from their mentor and dragons) so I expected Ruskya to actually care about her a little. I also wished she could’ve done a lot more. Like at least shown some skill or fighting or helping her brother? The two of them should be of close to equal strength since most of Ruskya’s power comes from his BOND with his SISTER.

Another issue involving Duskya and all of the women in the series was that I felt like the book was vaguely undermining their roles. There were only three female dragon riders and two female dragons mentioned in the story. There may have been some virus epidemic that wiped out most of the female population a while back in history but I felt like there probably could’ve been some more female led roles in the book.

I also didn’t like Ruskya. It wasn’t, surprisingly, because he annoyed me or was just a terrible person, but because he was the male version of a Mary Sue. He literally couldn’t do anything wrong. He was smart, handsome and the best rider in the colony. Not that having any of these qualities makes the character bad, but he just didn’t seem to have any flaws or emotions.

Speaking of emotions, that will bring me to the romance. Personally, this was also haunted by the Happened Too Fast syndrom. I felt absolutely ZERO spark between the main love interests. This is probably because they only had around five interactions throughout the book. It went from Maybe We Could Be Something More to I Love Her More Than I Love My Family in like five chapters. One character mentions ‘seeing a spark’ but the only spark I saw is when my computer burst into flames while reading that sentence.

The book remained at a constant 3.5 stars throughout the whole book due to somewhat ok battle scenes and at one point I wanted to see what would happen. Then two things happened that brought down that iffy rating at the end of the book.

The first was this scene/chapter involving the female dragon. There was this thing mentioned a while back about mates. A dragon (though it was a different one) mentioned that they would want a mate for life. This means that mating holds an emotional value to a dragon even if it varies from dragon to dragon. In this particular chapter, the female dragon was being used to lay eggs since she was the only female dragon in this particular group and they need hatchlings.

In this group, the male dragons would take turns mating with the female dragon. She had no consent and wasn’t able to choose who she mated with. The male dragons would take turns mating with her. A few chapters later it was mentioned that SIXTEEN dragons had mated with her and WITHOUT her consent. It was mostly just passed off as ok and no big deal to any of the characters. I as a reader was very disturbed because I had viewed this as rape? But it was just seen as totally fine? Yuck.

The second thing happened at the very very end of the book. There was another absolutely dry romance with actually zero interactions until this point in the book when they were suddenly in love. It was all fine and well until I read this sentence:

He’s the same age as my da.

And then this…

“What if he only sees me as a child?”

Wait what?

“After a certain point, you forget about age.

WAIT A SECOND

it often doesn’t matter the age difference or how
illogical it seems.

Can you just….Stop??? THIS WAS A POINTLESS RELATIONSHIP ANYWAY. Like, one is still in their twenties and the other is probably seventy to eighty years old??? Not ok???? Like, yeah. Age doesn’t matter once you’re in your HUNDREDS. You’ve both had time to grow and mature. You’re both ADULTS. But a twenty year old and a seventy-eighty year old? NO. Please stop. One is an adult and while the other is also still an adult, they still aren’t as experienced and wise as the other so it would be super unbalanced. I might have a little more Ok with it, but the way it was worded was so disgustingly pedophilic I couldn’t just blink and move on.

Quotes

The dragon turned now to Braidyn. “Little one, thank you for staying with me. I can see that you honor dragons.”
With a slight tremble to his voice, Braidyn replied, “Only those who are kind to people, and don’t go off killing or burning their homes.”
“Ah,” the dragon answered.

…

“Really?” Carryl answered. “Does he think I am dumb or something?”
“Or something,” Cerulean replied.

…

After a moment’s pause, he realized what his heart’s desire was.

What Does the Cat Think?

Rarw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *breathes bad breath*

I give this book 2 stars out of 5