Book Review: The Dragon Tamer (Alveria Dragon Akademy #1)

The Dragon Tamer
Ava Richardson
3/5

Overview

The Dragon Tamer follows the POVs of Kaelan, a peasant girl discovering her budding powers connected to her newly-discovered parentage, and Prince Lasaro, the youngest son of a powerful dragon queen who has yet to demonstrate the powers he knows he should have.

I was super excited to read The Dragon Tamer just based on the cover. Dragons and magic? Sounds like the best kind of book. First off, I don't believe that Richardson was able to give me the world I was looking for. There were a lot of elements that felt half-baked, starting with the protagonists themselves. There was no build-up to anything, I feel like every little plot twist was just handed to us. I was a little disappointed that they decided to go for the love-at-first-sight trope, it was another example of handing the plot to us. She can roar? Oh yeah her dad's not just a dragon, but the biggest, baddest dragon. She meets a prince? Immediate connection which he equivocates to love. I feel like the whole plot was more focused on helping the prince find his powers rather than encouraging Kaelan's powers, and I liked Kaelan a lot more than Lasaro and wanted her to succeed.

It was lighthearted for sure, but I don't feel like that exactly matched with the idea that the whole kingdom was breaking down from internal civil war. The civil war was fair considering the book started with her being attacked for being a dragon lover, when dragons are the supposedly ruling family and the strongest of everyone. No one was doing anything to even try to stifle this anti-dragon sentiment a little? Like, when one of your provinces is so against you that the people who support you are immediately attacked, I don't think you're really that strong of a ruling family.That's fair with the description of the book, but there wasn't enough plot-support for that kind of conflict. The fundamentals of the story are interesting, but I needed more detail for a better review.

Would I Recommend?

There's definitely promise with the plot, but there really wasn't much special about it. If you love dragons, there aren't that many great books featuring them so this one falls pretty middle-tier. I'll try to read the next book and hope that I get some more substance for Kaelan and Lasaro.