Dragon Called
Ava Richardson
In a kingdom that has fallen into chaos, one young woman—and her dragon—are thrust into the role of bringing balance to the land. From the moment Dayie washed ashore as an infant, everyone in her tiny village treated her as… different…more.
My Rating:
Once an orphan, now a slave, a girl with only a single name finds that these two words are not what define her in Dragon Called by Ava Richardson.
This novel may have a fair amount of tropes that could have some groaning in advance, but the book is worth more than a quick glance. The world building isn’t thrusting the reader into some newly fashioned, totally alien world, but what Richardson does is offer just the right amount of description to allow us into her world and build the rest from our own imaginations. Sure, it might not be so incredibly unique to the dragon fantasy genre, but it offers a unique perspective, and a unique villain. Dayie is a girl, no more than seventeen, who has no past and a downtrodden present, but when afforded the chance of a future, she takes it.
That’s not without a few drawbacks. The beginning chapters have her struggling to get away from the traveling, dragon-thieving gypsies who bought her and subject her to abuse. Often times, she ends up falling back in line with them, even though readers will want her running the opposite direction. This speaks to the years of neglect she has endured, which, intentional or not, is a daring and direct expression of what long term abuse can do to a person, and how hard it is to get out from under that shadow. With the help of a dragon, Dayie finds herself, and embraces her strange ways, knowing that she has a great power that she should be using for good. Gaining friends along the way, and with the slightest hint of a future romance, this young adult, dragon epic is a fanciful, adventurous read that proves being your own person, and being different, is worth fighting for.
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