A slow burn queer fantasy with gender fluidity that unfurled and worked its way into my heart!

There is something to be said about fantasy books, at least for me, they’re a lot of work at the beginning because there is a world to flesh out as well as magic systems—I get lost and I need a map at times but, you know, we get there eventually and when we do? Fire!!

Enter Arcady who speaks a spell and winds up bringing their very own Dragon through the veil—one that they end up bonded to despite their absolute displeasure. Everen—the last male dragon—finds himself in the human world, a land that used to belong to the dragons before they were booted out and history was re-written. Now, they’re Gods that are worshipped by the very humans that stole their lands in the first place and they desperately want to take it back with Everen’s help. There is only one teensy-tiny problem: he needs Arcady to trust him and fall in love to complete their bond, and then he needs to kill them so the Dragons can return.

Arcady honestly was the thief of my heart, no surprise there because they are a thief and I’m here for those Kaz x Celeana vibes! I love banter and snark and enemies-to-lovers with the don’t-touch-me-but-touch-me-anyway-despite-the-fact-I-might-steal-your-magic kind of problems! Also… this book took hair dying and dancing to an all new level 👀

And, of course, our dragon Everen who I’m just going to go ahead and call it and say he fell first—both literally and figuratively. 😂 Honestly, that I should hate you but I want you mixed with an impossible choice had me hooked! I do love me some high stakes romance!

With dragons, heists, assassins, prophecies, and magic, and a longing that had me riveted—Dragonfall definitely delivered! 🤩

Thank you @netgalley and @dawbooks for the ARC! Review to come on Instagram.

Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the ARC of this book!

What a great start to an epic fantasy series! I knew I had to read this book when read the first part of the synopsis: "Long ago, humans betrayed dragons, stealing their magic and banishing them to a dying world. Centuries later, their descendants worship dragons as gods. But the "gods" remember, and they do not forgive." I've been craving a fantasy series where dragons are more than beasts/creatures and have a more active role in the world building. The dragons did not disappoint. They have a dragon form, human form, and a (somewhat terrifying) in-between form.

The book included multiple POVs to give a better understanding of what is going on in the world and make the world building easier to understand. Everen is sucked into the human world by something Arcady did and they quickly find out that there is some sort of bond between them. Of course they both immediately want to kill each other, so we get a healthy dose of enemies to lovers romance to go with the overall plot. There's not much I can say without giving things away about this book, but I recommend this to anyone who is interested in a queer enemies to lovers dragon fantasy book with magic. Did I mention dragons? The ending left on a bit of a cliffhanger and I cannot wait until we get the next installment.

The writing in this book is so beautiful and rich! I absolutely loved the writing. I think how the multi-POV was done was truly brilliant as well.

However, I was sadly unable to connect with the characters. There was never enough personality for me to truly bond with. The world building, the magic system, the plot, everything was done so well. It isn't that they lacked depth (their backstories are actually very interesting) its more that there was no spark in them that really made me want to root for them.

Thank you so much to DAW books for approving me this ARC!

Thanks DAW and NetGalley for this eARC, these opinions are my own. I found this book to be intriguing. I love dragon fantasy so I was really excited to read it! Everen is determined to bring dragons back to the human world which they were unfairly removed from after being betrayed by humans. Once through a rift Everen is bonded to the human Arcady, who is trying to figure out who set the Plaguebringer up to take the fall for the plagues. Will they bond or no up betraying one another? There’s some really great world building here but I would say you have to really pay attention because it can be wordy! I liked the relationship between Everen and Arcady and can’t wait to see what’s next!

I really wanted to love this book as the plot summary sounded great and I haven't read anything with dragons in a while. But unfortunately I am finding it difficult to read this book. The vocabulary used by the author in this book is pretty vast; there's a lot of words I had to look up. I'm talking at least once a page.

The two main characters are flat and not interesting at all. Although I do love their named.

I may continue reading this until the next book I want to read arrives, but otherwise this may be going on the DNF pile.

Plot: 3/5
Overall it was good, but things happend slow.
Characters: 3/5
I really tried to like them but I just could not. They were fine, but nothing interesting.
Worldbuilding: 3/5
the worldbuilding and the magic system were interesting, that was what got me through the book.
Writing: 2/5
I think one of my biggest issues with this book was the choice to write as if one perspective was recounting memories directly to the reader. "You were, you did, you looked like, you said," etc. It just really did not work for me.
Romance: 2/5
It felt awkward and there was no chemistry between them.

This book is amazing!!

It has the perfect ingredients to create a remarkable story: dragons, enemies to lovers, queer, great world building and character development, and to top it all, a shocking ending that had me screaming for the second book!

Go read it this May, you’ll not regret it!

Of dragons, prophecies, betrayal and a bond spanning worlds

The story starts out as high fantasy at its best, showing us the plot through the eyes of a dragon. Not any ol' dragon of course.
With this comes a lot of exposition dump, but I didn't mind this at all. On the contrary, I enjoyed the rich worldbuilding and felt like having something unique in my hands.
As the plot moves on, the story changes, at times becoming a mini heist, at times a story of betrayal, then again a training montage for thievery. So the middle part of this book took me out of the story many times, in my opinion not really knowing for a big part what kind of story it wants to tell.
For me the book is at its best when it stays with Everen and Arcady, as they explore (and often times loathe) their bond. I would have been completely happy to see the world solely through their eyes. However, there are two more POVs in this book, and even though the chapters drive the plot forward, I couldn't seem to care about them, sadly.
The book is very enjoyable and I love the two main protagonists as well as the cliffhanger / game changer at the end. Overall it left me slightly disappointed.

3,5/5 stars

2.5 stars

Some of my dislike for this book may just be due to personal preference reasons, so if it sounds interesting to you it may still be worth a try! I just felt like there wasn’t anything new or original here—been there, read that. “Dragonfall” reads like someone smashed together “Seraphina” and “The Name of the Wind” but without really building on any of those existing ideas that have already been done so many times in fantasy. The writing is also less enjoyable and the characters less developed than I was hoping for. Overall, somewhat disappointing.
The positives: gender fluid main character, rich worldbuilding full of music, magic, geography, and religion.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It has a dragon pov. That is the review. Enough said. The dragon pov should be enough to read this book.

Okay beyond that… this book has nice worldbuilding (I really like the intrigue of how both worlds intersect), two compelling main characters, and a side character that had an interesting plotline (and I also just wanted to give a hug). The romance between Everen and Arcady was nice and fit well within the overall plot.

There is also an interesting writing choice here, where Everen’s POV addresses the other main character, Arcady, as ‘You’ in the narration. It took a little to get used to but after two chapters it really worked for me

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this ebook ARC!

When I read the synopsis of this book, I thought it was tailor-made for me; Dragons? Yes! LGBT representation? Yes! Lore-rich fantasy world? Yes!

... But something about it didn't draw me in, and I DNFed at 30%. I decided to stop rather than push through and risk souring my mostly positive feelings towards the book.

I loved the concept for this world - that the dragons were worshipped as gods, but there worshippers were the ones that banished them in the first place. However, I went in expecting an adult high fantasy book, but the writing struck me as more Young Adult. This is not intended as a criticism - but was not what I was looking for, nor expecting, so I admitted it wasn't my type of book and put it down.

I think a lot of people will like this book, so this is just down to my personal taste.

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. WOW. Just WOW. I absolutely am obsessed with this book. Dragons that can shift into human bodies? Sold. An unexpected romance? Double sold. I already can't wait to read the next book by this author. A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads.

Like another book ive been given the opportunity to review thanks to netgalley for an honest review, I could tell pretty quickly that this was written for me, I generally prefer epic, large scale, fantasy. This had a really great idea, but the execution just wasn't there,

The prose was a big issue, it was jarring for a reason i can't quite put my finger on. The two POV we got were so nearly identical, despite one being a frickin' DRAGON. But at no point did it feel like the character, Everen, even feel like a dragon.

As I said, the idea for a good story was in here, somewhere, but I feel like they didn't get enough beta readers, or didn't take the advice from said beta readers. I really wanted to like it, the blurb seemed like something I could zip through, as i read about 100 pages an hour, depending on the prose, complexity, and subject matter (a good example is Malazan Book Of the Fallen, I can't read at my normal pace with that series, I MUST take my time, and re-read passages)

I don't like to give negative reviews, so I will just say, this was not written for me, or my tastes. I gave it 2/5 star, only because I wasn't able to give it a 1.5/5 and 1 star seemed a BIT too harsh, but my gut tells me that if good reads allowed 1.5/etc that is the score I would give this book. I rounded up.

I'd be interested in reading another novel by this author, but maybe in a handful of years with some more experience under their belt

Thank you netgalley and the publishers for this arc! DNF 15% in, so take my review with a grain of salt.

I wanted to like this book so bad, the concept was amazing and captured me instantly. But for me, the writing is severely lacking. It felt very amateur and the text was filled with overused idioms, similes, and comparisons that really took me out of it. Another person may love the style, but for me it was incredibly hard to read. Just 15% felt like an eternity. I think the concept is original though, and I really liked the idea but overall it is not for me.

What to say about this book?
At the beginning, I was quite appalled by the way Everen's PoV kept talking to a "you" without it being the reader but someone else entirely, someone we still didn't know and only then recognized as Arcady. After this small setback, the read went smoothly.

Both Everen and Arcady have goals they have to - even <i>must</i> - reach in order for things to go as planned and as necessary. There are sacrifices to be made even if they sound less and less convincing as they walk the same path.

Credible, morally grey-ish characters that suffer the consequences of their actions, a queer cast in a world that completely normalizes it, a lovely final angst. "Dragonfall" promises to bewitch readers and become a big, recognized trilogy all over the world.

3.5/5 stars

This story had quite an interesting concept and I was pretty engaged the entire time. However, there were times where the writing style really stuck out as not for me.

The characters, while they all had their backstories, lacked depth to me so I couldn't invest in them the way I'd generally want to. And I wasn't into the relationship as much as I probably should have been, but I definitely wasn't against it either.

This book was entertaining and consistent all the way through, and I don't think it's bad at all. Just wasn't totally for me. Still, I'm invested enough that I'll probably check out the sequel in the future!

Thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for access to this.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me this Arc in exchange for my review.

Summary:
Everen is the last male dragon, destined to save his fellow dragons. He falls through the veil into the Hyman world and accidentally bonds with a human named Arcady. In order to fulfill the prophecy, he has to fully bond with Arcady, which comes with a lot of risks

Thoughts:
First let me say that I loved the name Everen and this book had so much potential. However, the book incredibly difficult to follow. I understand that the author was going for gender fluidity, but using the word "they" so many times in a sentence makes it awkward to read, and difficult to understand who is being talked about.
I'm really disappointed because I was really looking forward to reading this but unfortunately, I had to DNF.

I can't honestly say I would recommend this book.

I made it to 37% before I just had to call it quits.

I’m so disappointed – this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, from an author whose work I’ve enjoyed before. And every other review I’ve seen for Dragonfall is glowing with love and praise!

But I was so bored, and unimpressed, and the writing style was awful: blunt, arrhythmic, and sentences often seemed to be missing words (although hopefully that’s just an issue with the arc, and will be fixed in the final version). Everything was telling-telling-telling (which sometimes contradicted itself), the worldbuilding was incredibly simplistic, despite a few attempts to add interesting details, and then it started to turn into a freaking heist story!

I was hoping for – expecting – lush prose and detailed, interesting worldbuilding; and to be honest, I was also expecting Dragonfall to be written in third-person, not first. The voices of the main characters didn’t appeal to me, and although Arcady and Everen both have what should be interesting backstories, as characters I found both of them predictable and dull. I was genuinely annoyed that the culture of the dragons was so minimal; it felt very lazy and hand-waved, and nothing about the dragons themselves felt non-human. The only thing that differentiated Everen from any of the human characters was that he hated humans. That was it. Nothing about him felt alien, he didn’t have a unique perspective on anything, he didn’t think like someone who had never been human. He could have been a human character from a distant island, as he claimed, and it would have made almost no difference to the reading experience.

I guess a big part of the problem is that I was expecting Dragonfall to be something it isn’t. But what it is doesn’t interest me at all.

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I saw this book on goodreads and thought dragons?! Sign me up! But it fell kind of flat for me. It's told from alternating points of view and when I started I thought well I should like one character right? I didn't like any of them. I also found the story very slow to get moving. Which made it feel a bit like work instead. I also didn't love that it was very preachy about gender. I understand representation for characters but it didn't need to be a whole lesson. There was also a lot of overexplaining. Although the magic system was vastly underexplained.

Dragonfall by LR Lam immediately catches your eye because of the beautiful cover. It is the first book in a setup for multiple books. Everen is a dragon with heavy prophecy on them, and Arcady the human has big dreams. They become connected by magic and have to figure out their way forward.

The world that Lam has built is interesting - the roles of gender are much more fluid and respected. Language is more intertwined. The way if the magic in the world was a bit confusing to me at times, and the end a bit chaotic. I think if i read the book a second time that confusion would go away.

I am looking forward to a sequel! Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.