Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Dragon's Fate by Ava Richardson is a YA fantasy book about a dragon-rider. The story revolves around Kira, who finds an abandoned dragon named Gilda one day. While Gilda's mother died due the plague, Gilda is perfectly healthy. Soon, Kira and Gilda, who can "talk" to her telepathically, embark on a journey to find the cause of the plague and to find a cure for dragons everywhere. Can the pair succeed in their quest?

Here is a gripping excerpt from Chapter 1:

"He nodded to Kira. "Don't know how long I have. Let's go."
There was no time to think it over. Kira clambered up into the saddle that sat just behind Axel's neck. The stirrups, adjusted for Eli's long legs, hung below the reach of her feet, but Axel was already moving. All she could do was hang on.
Normally, the dragon lifted effortlessly into the air with a single beat of his broad wings, but there was nothing normal about this nightmare."

Overall, Dragon's Fate is a YA fantasy that reads more like a middle-grade novel. One highlight of this book are the dragons. After seeing the cover and reading the blurb, I was in the mood for dragon rides, dragon battles, and magic. I took off 2 stars, because I started to lose interest halfway through. From what I read, it seems like this book is aimed at a younger audience. I didn't see anything that made it YA. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of fantasy in general, you can check out this book, which is available now!

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review Dragon’s Fate by Ava Richardson.

This book had an interesting concept, but I didn’t find myself intrigued by it. I was drawn in by the pretence of dragons and witches but sadly this book fell flat for me. I think Dragon’s Fate would make a younger me happy, possibly the younger me that was first discovering young adult fantasy. I do still head-over-heels love young adult fantasy, as well as middle grade- but I just felt for some reason like I was too old for this book.

I'm not sure what to say about this one. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great and it just kind of meandered. The plot kept starting and stalling and it just felt meh. The worldbuilding was interesting though and I found the concept of this place that wasn't Earth fascinating. I just wish it tied together more and that things felt more intense and exciting.

Overall this was okay but nothing great.

Thanks to Netgalley for an Arc of this for an honest review.

DNF at 68%

If we only judged a book based off of it’s plot, my rating would have been higher.

I’ve never read an Ava Richardson book before, and while this is the first in a series, it’s not the first in this world. As such, I found the details of Ragond to be interesting and well thought out. This is a land that isn’t Earth, as seen by the fact that some characters are said to have portaled over from Earth. This is also a land where there is a magic bond between dragons and dragon riders.

However, the bond between these two groups is weakening, and riders are dying as their dragons get sick.

There were a lot of small details that irked me about this world. For one, dragons are shown to be able to speak and walk immediately after birth. While I understand that dragons are a fantasy race and authors can therefore do whatever they want with their lore, it just felt wrong to me that these creatures were so mature immediately after birth.

(And large! At no point is the dragon character the size of the dragon on the cover. She’s the size of a dog at birth.)

I also didn’t enjoy how every character understood the thoughts of other characters without explanation. One of my biggest examples of this is an innkeeper met early on, who immediately singles out the main character’s dragon companion as an orphan. Did I miss a sign over the dragon’s head pointing her out as an orphan? Do orphans have specific physical traits that show everyone their parental status? If dragons losing their mothers before birth is rare, how does a random innkeeper know how to see the signs?

Another thing that irritated me was the wording in this book and some of the terminology. In a world without technology, I can find no reason that characters should know the term “glitch”, or that it should be so widespread of a term that everyone uses it to describe the plight magic-users are facing in this story. Characters use wagons to get around, but they also know computer terms?

Ultimately, I found myself dreading the next time I would pick this book up to read just a bit more, and decided it was better for both myself and my review to mark this book as “did not finish”.

I don't have much to say about this one, other than the fact it was just kind of there. I can tell the author clearly is passionate about her writing and I always want to love any books with dragons at the forefront, but I just couldn't connect with the story. Part of that was because this felt far less about dragons than it was about witches. For most of the story, you could have thought Gilda - the dragon - was a human, if not for the occasional mention of scales and wings.

My other main qualm with this book has to do with the writing. I know that the advice "show not tell" has been overused to the point of abuse, but this story could have used it. 3/4s of all exposition and worldbuilding comes through dialogue, which can be done, but in this case it just pulled me out of the story.
This aspect, however, could make this story better suited for younger readers, especially those just discovering YA. The content is suitable for most preteens, I'd believe, as there's only one gruesome scene that I can remember and zero romance.

Overall, I can see this story finding its perfect audience, that audience just wasn't me.