• StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I heard all the hype, so I read it. I now don’t understand the hype. It has three main elements:

      Dragons

      Magic School

      Romance/light erotica

      It doesn’t do any of those things particularly well. There’s nothing interesting or particularly original about the dragons or magic school stories. The plot is full of ham-fisted exposition (the protagonist “reciting facts about the world to deal with stress”? Really?) and the characters are two dimensional and boring as well. The romance is super cringe:

      spoiler

      the unpopular girl falls for the school’s “bad boy”. In a ‘shocking twist’, he falls for her too. The romance is completely shallow and goes from “I’m attracted to you but we can’t be together” to “we’re soul bonded and will be together forever” in the span of a few in-story days. Literally one short chapter. Again, super cringe and hardly believable, even considering these students are supposed to be late teens to early twenties yet actually act like 15 year olds. Yes, the least believable part in a book about magical, flying reptiles is the shitty romance.

      Plus this really short video nails the entire book and not in a flattering way. It may not be the worst book I’ve ever read, but it’s amongst the top ten.