Dragon Outcast

Age of Fire Book Three
by E.E. Knight

Eh again. I thought I'd give this a try because it was the one that initially caught my interest in the series. It's about the third dragon, maimed by his siblings at birth and shoved out of the nest. In the first two books he's portrayed as a traitor, but this one shows from his perspective, how the dwarves tricked him and he crawled away in bitterness at what he'd done. Travelled for ages underground and fell in with a lot of bats that wheedled him into letting them suck his blood, in return for which they guided him to a hidden stronghold of dragons. So the part with the bats was engaging. The mishaps and scrapes along the way, dismissive. The encounter with dragon society, so dull. I just did not want to read a lot of what came across as court intrigue and power struggles- at some point, in spite of the constant fighting and mention of draconic characteristics- greedily snarfing down meat, snapping their tails around, caring for the health of their scales- it felt like I was reading about people, not dragons. As before, I liked well enough the first part, when the dragon was travelling companion with another animal species. Almost halfway through the book, when he joined the other dragons, I lost interest. I did skim enough to see where this was going- in spite of his outcast status and multiple physical shortcomings, the copper dragon overcomes the judgement of the other dragons to obtain a position of power among them and- presumably- lead them against their enemy mankind. But the execution was just so poor I never got there. Bummer.

Abandoned                  379 pages, 2007