I feel incredibly privileged to have been granted access to this ARC - my first ever! - because this book is absolutely awesome!

From the first few chapters I was utterly swept away on this fast-paced, action-packed adventure. There is political and religious wrangling and intrigue abound, swashbuckling and dashing heroics (along with plenty of sneakiness, thievery, and general skullduggery), a host of compelling characters and, of course, lots and lots of dragons! It has pretty much everything I love in a fantasy novel and it is written so wonderfully. Reading it was a delight!

The world building is rich, evocative and woven into the story seamlessly. I adored learning about the different cultures, factions, magic system and mythos that prevail in the world this story is set in, and then having some of those ideas turned on their hand before we reach the end.

Also, let me just say, the DRAGONS and the dragon lore in this book are superb. If you are a dragon loving fantasy reader and want a sophisticated, high stakes story with dragonriders and mental bonding, look no further because this fits the bill beautifully.

I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy of this beauty and the next installment in the series!

I'd like to say a huge thank you to Bradley P. Beaulieu, Head of Zeus and Netgalley for the eARC! I enjoyed every page.

Another excellent work by Beaulieu. This one did take a bit of time to get into. There were a lot of characters and places to wrap your head around. However, once past the first part, the book really starts to unfold into an intriguing and captivating tale of politics, betrayal, and magic.

I just loved everything about this, and I am very much looking forward to the next one.

The Dragons of Deepwood Fen is the first book in the Book of the Holt series. It is a fantastic introduction to this series - the world was such an interesting one and so well written. I loved the concept of the different dragons and their powers. The characters are all well written and the plot was compelling throughout. I would highly recommend checking this one out.

This is an incredibly detailed and complex story that pulls you into its world and characters. There are a lot of different plots, and plenty of politics at play, with the narratives of multiple characters all weaving together to form a more complete picture of what is happening in these lands around the Deepwood Fen. I enjoyed how intricate this story was and watching the encounters between different narrators, allowing us to slowly piece together a terrible picture of what was being planned for these lands. I did find it to be very slow paced, and too long a novel, and would have preferred to see more action and perhaps less narratives. There are several main narrators and a few who have ad hoc chapters and though I didn’t struggle to follow the changes between POVs, it was perhaps more than it needed. I also found that I didn’t always grasp what was going on, or what was being referred to. With it being such a complex novel, and a fantasy, there are a lot of terms and places that are mentioned that are hard to keep track of and on top of that, is a vast amount of characters. Overall I did enjoy the book, and it does remind me a little of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing, but it isn’t a series I’d rush back to.

Lorelei Aurelius is the smartest inquisitor in the mountain city of Ancris. When a mysterious tip leads her to a clandestine meeting between the Church and the hated Red Knives, she uncovers a plot that threatens not only her home but the empire itself.The trail leads her to Rylan Holbrooke, a notorious thief posing as a dragon singer. Rylan came to Ancris to solve the very same mystery she stumbled onto. Knowing his incarceration could lead to the Red Knives’ achieving their goals, Lorelei makes a fateful she frees him.Now branded as traitors, the two flee the city on dragonback. In the massive forest known as the Holt, they discover something terrible...

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

The Dragons of Deepwood Fen is such a fantasy epic!
This is a hefty piece of writing, so if long, detail rich, descriptive fanatsy with multiple POV's and plot lines is your thing, dive in to The Dragons of Deepwood Fen!

This book is all action and substance, right from the very first page.
The multiple POV's and plot lines do get a little confusing in the beginning but the reduced POV's later in the book do somewhat remedy this.

From the first few pages, I was totally engrossed in this incredibly fleshed out, realised world. As a lover of fantasy, I thoroughly enjoyed this read.

The reason this book falls short of the five star mark, is down to the confusing change of POVs at the beginning of the book and the story lost me midway through. I feel as though a lot of the mid section of the book could have been condensed into fewer POV/plot line changes.

This one is fantastic. I really enjoyed it and all the dragons . It was a a great reading experience and I loved it very much. Highly recommend for fans of fantasy books and dragons.

DNF @ 37%

I expected to love this title:. It's got so many of my favourite fantasy elements (dragons! Intrigue! An ensemble cast! Celtic-inspired worldbuilding! Dragons!!) and I promise, I tried really REALLY hard to. But therein lies the problem: I had to *try*, and I had to really work hard at it.

For me that's how the experience of reading this book can be summed up. It was a lot of work, and work that never seemed to get easier. From the get-go the reader is expected to work hard to keep track of the myriad moving parts--i believe we had EIGHT POVs over the first nine chapters--and while normally I love being dropped into a complicated world and left to fend for myself, here I really struggled. I struggled to keep track of the webs of schemes and counter-schemes and what the various reveals meant for both the many characters we're meant to invest in and the world more broadly; and while I did like and find interesting what was going on, and found the characters and worldbuilding compelling, and I could see how much potential there was for all these threads to come together, it just wasn't enough. Normally I'd tear through a book like this over a few days but I found myself chipping away at it chapter by chapter in between others that DID manage to grab me and hold me and maybe held my hands just a bit better (though ironically, when we did get exposition, it was typically delivered via dry walls of text). This is a book that would definitely benefit from a glossary + character list in the back.

I think ultimately the book read just a little too generic epic fantasy for me to get over the intensely steep learning curve and slow pacing. The worldbuilding had a lot of unique elements, yes, and so did the characters--but the overall mouthfeel was of a type of story we've read plenty of times before. I'm sure there are plenty of readers for whom this will be a feature not a bug, and I *would* recommend this title to those who like those older-style, more top-down chunky epic fantasies; there is a lot in it to like. However I regret that it is not for me, and I just couldn't make myself push through another six hours of estimated reading time.

Thank you to NetGalley, Head of Zeus and the author for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

My students love dragons, what can I say? Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this early copy of the Dragons of Deepwood Fen by Bradley P Beaulieu. An enchanting and magical read.