Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Rage of Dragons

Liked it.

This was...an interesting book. I think the first and last third were solid. I think there were way too many training sequences. But I enjoyed watching Tau's character development (if not slow and frustrating at times) and his relationships with his sword brothers grow. I loved how he was eventually able to alter the power dynamic. That was fascinating to see. Often in these epics, the main character will just be good because they were born for it. This is where Winter excels. Tau was never a great fighter, he had no passion for it, and no talent. But by pushing himself as far as he possibly could, going to new heights (and depths), he crafted and molded himself into it. That was probably the best part of this book.

I still think at least 100 pages could be cut for the training scenes.

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decembermagpie's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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blacksphinx's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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murphysmate's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Lots and lots of fight scenes, but otherwise very good, with a great magic system, and a different universe to most fantasy books.

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_forestofpages's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

If you enjoy a frustratingly stupid main character who has no character growth and a book with a lot of training montages, you might like this book.

I however, did not enjoy my time reading this.

The pacing started out slow, revved up and got interesting then slowed down until the last 100 pages or so. The characters, including Tau are fairly one dimensional and none of them are given the time or tlc to make me care about any of them, which really is a shame because a few of them had such interesting introductions, but the author did nothing with them.

The plot is a typical revenge fantasy, but because that's not enough apparently the author added in a colonizer vs colonized war plot that came in at the last second to delay the actual revenge plot. The fact that the people that you are supposed to be rooting for are the colonizing force that started the war is hardly touched on until the last 100 pages.

The world building is interesting, but a lot of it is just set dressing for the training montages and skirmishes. About 85% of the book is just that; battles and training then more battles and more training etc. For a book called Rage of DRAGONS there sure is a lack of dragons.

Now onto the personal issues: the book has a society that is Matriarchal, but the only really important recurring female character is Tau's lover who really just served to move the plot forward and to be an expositional device. The only other important female character is the Queen who is just talked about but doesn't appear until near the conclusion of the book. There are a lot of lines that are said by soldiers or thought by Tau that are casually sexist or just generally disrespectful towards women, this bothered me since the book already is very male centric despite it having a society where women supposedly hold all the power. Historically women are marginalized, but this is a FANTASY book and I really don't understand why fiction authors especially in fantasy, keep mirroring their societies on the real world, when they coul literally do anything they want. Like, for example, not demeen women.

Another issue was the malicious and colonizing nature of the Omehi. They are the aggressors and also built a classist society and are constantly seen as Gifted by their Goddess and are right to be doing the horrible things they do. The classism is such an interesting conversation but everytime the author got close to really diving into that, he'd change the subject by having Tau do something stupid.

Honestly, the absolute stupidity and lack of awareness of Tau was the main reason this rating is so low. Having an unlikable MC is fine, but stupidity I can't tolerate. He never learns from his mistakes, has no regard for people's lives even, and especially the people he supposedly cares for. And he does so many things that, by the laws of the society he lives in, should get him killed on the spot, yet he somehow just gets away with it?

(Side rant: for a book filled with detailed gore and violence and literal child murder, the fake/made up curse words are a strange choice. Like cursing is where the author draws the line but graphic body horror is totally fine?)

This entire story was frusrating and uninteresting. Nothing was explored, all of the characters were forgettable to me, and Tau was so painful the read. I will read book two because I paid money for it, and I hope, given my low expectations, that I will like it.

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