Raising Dragons (Dragons in Our Midst, #1)

by Bryan Davis

[ladygrey]

I’m kind of hit or miss with this book. Had I read it when I was younger, I’d have probably enjoyed it quite a bit. I enjoyed the spin on Arthurian legend and the characters are well enough developed for middle-grade.

They aren’t especially deep or complex. I read a few books when I was in jr. high with deep and complex characters (mostly Robin McKinley). But its not typical of middle-grade and thats ok.

The writing style, though, surprised me. It is so overwritten. In some ways I want to be generous because Davis implements all the writing advice about show don’t tell and using interesting verbs everyone tosses around all the time. But you don’t want to do it ALL the time because it becomes overwhelming.

Every single description needs a metaphor and the guy can’t just turn on the light - “with an upward swipe he slapped at the wall” and he missed and has to do it again! There was another passage I wanted to note where a simple description drowned in verbs and metaphor but I didn’t note it and am not going back to find it.

Again, if I was younger the effusive writing probably wouldn’t bother me as much. Because I wouldn’t have read as much and I’d have connected with the characters more - and connecting with the characters allows you to overlook a host of flaws.

Even with the overwrought writing, the story turned out to be fairly interesting and moved along at a nice pace. It gets three stars for being a pretty good book and a little bit of goodwill for being the sort of thing I probably would have liked a great deal when I was younger.