Eon (Dragoneye, #1)

by Alison Goodman

[sa090]

Been on my TBR for a while and I honestly have no idea why I waited this long to read it, my god it was difficult to put it down! Although being a big book it was much easier to get through than I expected, my immense enjoyment played the biggest role in that. However, while I will be taking very positively about it, there is one thing that pissed me off a lot in this book and unfortunately it happened right in the last couple of chapters of it.

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As a personal preference I'm a big fan of anime so a book that handles a little bit of that far eastern culture is something I appreciate, it being Chinese was a bit different given the differing terminologies but overall it wasn't difficult to connect them in case I wanted to visualize what's happening in a bigger detail which Alison Goodman made pretty easy. This brings me to the very first huge plus of this book; world building. Because it's fantasy based with a whole new system of doing everything, I wholeheartedly appreciated the effort and time she took to describe everything in it. Everything from the way they're supposed to kowtow, how to deal with the royal family, proper conduct in some areas, how lords act with those beneath them... of course seeing it in a live action of sorts would've made it better but I really felt like I'm in a Chinese-ish setting and that made my immersion all the more fun.

Secondly her Dragoneye system, I thought I wouldn't be blown away after getting a chance to take a peak at Brandon Sanderson's Allomancy system but holy shit was I impressed, excited and insanely interested to learn more about this system. It's not as complex as Allomancy mind you but that doesn't mean it's any less unique. Having it be about my absolute favourite mythical creature makes it all better for me, I mean these dragons being based on the animals of the Chinese year and being keepers of different attributes or values while seeing how the selection happened was intense. I did want to see bigger focus on them since being keepers of different attributes most likely means that they have different abilities but even the lack of that didn't change much for me, there is a sequel so hopefully I'll see some of this there.

Next up is the identity issue, gender roles plays a huge part of this series and it's kind of grating to see the difference in treatments based on that, somewhat realistic but still meh. Of course this particular aspect leads our main character into a bit of an interesting psychological journey where she will meet others with a similar dilemma (I guess you can call it as such) and learn how to accept it or live with it. This actually brought me to my favourite quote in the book, probably ever, which should give an idea on how deeply integrated this subplot is in the story:

"I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be not be a truth others can accept, but I cannot live any other way."

Fights over the throne are always bloody and brutal which was also delivered by Alison Goodman, there is an instance where I was hoping she wouldn't actually go through with it but she did and it definitely added to the danger of the situation but didn't really make it any less heartbreaking. The high speed action that took over the last 4-6 chapters of the book was really awesome to read and I honestly couldn't put the book down until I completed it and overall it was worth it.

Now this brings me to what annoyed me in the book or more accurately pissed me off in it, the fate of a certain someone in the book. After all what happened, after everything that was done for it to end that way was a letdown, was naive and tbh felt insanely stupid of a decision. Hopefully this gets corrected in the second book because unless a miracle happens that changes what I think about that certain someone (highly unlikely) I would be one very very salty fan.

I definitely look forward to the sequel, I have a couple of more books I want to read first but it'll probably be the first sequel I read from the new series I started this year.

Final rating: 4.5/5