A review by bigteo
Dragonfall by L.R. Lam

adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

I don’t usually read fantasy, but this did intrigue me as having a dragon main character. Sadly it fell completely flat. I’m rating it higher than I would another run of the mill fantasy YA because at least there were some plot points and twists that were somewhat decent. 

The writing style wasn’t awful but it also wasn’t exactly great.

The characters, especially Arcady (the human), were so painfully bland and boring and nothing about them made me invested in the slightest. Everen (the dragon) had the most potential I suppose. There were a total of about FIVE different character POVs, and they changed each chapter. They also changed perspective; Everen narrated in second person, Arcady in first, and Sorrin (another human assassin character that had no real impact on the plot and never interacted with the main cast) narrated in third person. I can’t help but feel this was a huge detriment for the book. Why was it necessary at all? Wouldn’t the book have been better if we simply stuck with Everen, since he’s a classic fish-out-of-water character that doesn’t understand human customs and thus would have been a great way to contrast the cultural differences between dragons and the humans of the world? I also can’t help but feel that the choice for Everen to narrate about Arcady in second person was simply a way to avoid having to use any pronouns for Arcady, which would serve to make Arcady into a self insert character for the readers. 

Anyways, back to the characters. Arcady was boring and edgy and “I’m not like other thieves, I steal for good reasons” and “I hate the rich” in a way that echoed the author’s sentiments about the class system and capitalism in real life. The issue with that it lacks subtlety, is preachy, and doesn’t really fit in a fantasy society which has different rules from real life. Their motives didn’t really make sense either. They’re trying to find proof that their grandfather didn’t cause a plague and clear their family name, and the solution to that is to… go to school? Under the same government system that discriminated against them? They’re a thief, can’t they simply steal the information that their grandfather was framed? Shouldn’t the character (and the thief guild, called the Marricks) be aiming more for a societal upheaval? They complain so much about the rich upper class in the book that you’d expect there to be more of a payoff.

Everen was also a missed opportunity. He didn’t really feel like a dragon at all. I’ve seen some complain about his “I hate all humans” attitude but I feel like if the author pushed it more strongly it could have been interesting to make his prejudices against the human race come under scrutiny when faced with having to adapt to human customs. The author could have set Arcady to challenge Everen’s preconceived notions about how humans are inherently evil and thus facilitated his development. Nothing about his and Arcady’s relationship makes sense. There is literally no reason for Everen to like them at the end of the book. Nothing significant happens between them for Everen to suddenly want to save their life and save humanity.

The biggest letdown of this book by far was the abysmal world building. 

It feels like the author infodumps completely irrelevant information in an unnatural way and then fails to build a cohesive and interesting fantasy world. There’s a scene in which Everen and Arcady share information about eachother’s cultures and instead of learning anything interesting or having the characters challenge eachother, we get a page long rant about how everyone should accept everyone’s preferred pronouns and how the pronoun system works, which completely takes me out of the story and seems so bizarrely out of place. There’s no issue with wanting to be inclusive, but the way the character exposits this information is so obviously out of place and comes across as the author basically directly preaching to the reader. There are so many other instances too where the author will tell us directly about something with absolutely no subtlety or relevance to the plot or characters. 

Speaking of pronouns, it’s explained that people of higher status will be given a capitalised pronoun, like “the priest drunk from Their cup,” as an example. The problem with the capitalisation is that it’s completely unnatural with modern English and makes certain passages downright confusing to read. I found myself having to reread sections with capitalised pronouns because I kept on thinking it came after a full stop. I don’t see how this piece of world building was necessary seeing as there are already ways to show respect in English (like honorifics, which already exist in the world as “Sar” which is like “Sir” I guess.) For all the author’s insistence of correct pronouns, there was a passage in the book in which a character describes the Jaskian language (a rival country/city state) as being ugly and harsh. Nothing is done to challenge this. Jaskian’s have more rigid ideas about gender therefore their culture/language sucks, which is definitely fantasy xenophobia, no?

As an aside, I still don’t know what a “Drakine” actually is, obviously it’s some sort of upper class-man but it is literally never explained. That’s a common issue you’ll find in this book.  

The magic system is also poorly explained. I personally dislike the trope of having all humans capable of magic since it alienates me from relating to the human characters and their struggles, but this might just be a personal preference so I digress. There are other reviews that talk about the fantasy world building more thoroughly than I can since I don’t read fantasy often and therefore I don’t recognise certain tropes as easily. 

My final criticism that I haven’t seen discussed in other reviews is that this world literally contains dragon-gods and shadow rift creatures but nothing else? Wyverns are basically carrier pigeons, and there are passing mentions of mythical creatures like selkies, but no mention of them actually existing? The story takes place in a singular city which was also a missed opportunity to have the characters in different locations with different spectacular fantasy species that add flavour to the setting.

Anyways this review is way too long already so to sum it up i felt like this book was a bad, aimless mess with unlikeable characters that reek of missed opportunities. At least the twist at the end with a certain character was kind of decent? Not nearly enough to get me interested in reading the sequel when it comes out. 
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