The Bookworm: the last dragonlord by joanne bertin

The Last Dragonlord by Joanne Bertin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My younger sister, who was crazy about this particular series, has spent years attempting to get me to read this book. I've always been a bit wary of my sister's recommendations however, given her general aversion to fantasy novels.

I wasn't entirely wrong with my doubts in the end. This book isn't a classic or a straight up fantasy novel.

This is a romance novel set in a fantasy world.

Nevertheless, I found once I started this book, I couldn't put this down.

Don't get me wrong: a profound and thoughtful reading pursuit this is not. At its very core it is a shallow book with very little real depth and fairly cookie-cutter characters built around a cookie-cutter romantic notion that lacked personality or strife. Real character imperfections were few and far between.

Also the layout style the author chose to pursue, in that the reader knew of and were far more aware of the interactions and plans between the protagonist and antagonist certainly made supposedly dramatic points in the novel a rather frustrating or tiresome experience as it led one to question the general intelligence of the characters as a whole. It also made much of it much too predictable.

And yet, I found the pacing of the storytelling engaging and the characters enjoyable despite the lack of depth, to the point that I struggled to stop reading it at points. And I thought the world's mythology as a whole concerning the dragons to be a rather clever concept.

So despite all its short-comings, I gave it five stars, simply because it was a read that I did enjoy and in the end, a delightful breath of fresh air from the more heady material I tend to consume on a regular basis. There is nothing wrong with a light read, and it was on that basis that I rated it.

Did I take much away from the novel? No.
Did it make any real emotional or mental impact on me? Nope.
Will I read it again? Yes.

Because it's a very easy read.

With that said, I wouldn't really recommend it to serious fantasy readers... or most men for that matter. It's a little too voyeuristic (and therefore, unrealistic) for most and is more sappy than adventurous as well.

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