My Secret Hideout

WANTED: Good dragon book recommendations.

Like many people out there, I love dragons. It is the reason why I chose to read this book in the first place. Whether they'reEuropean dragons or Asian dragons, I love them all. From Avatar the Last Airbender, to How to Train Your Dragon, to Game of Thrones - they are BAMFs in my book. But I haven't read an awesome book about them ever since the fifth grade. (Thank you, Dragon Rider and Dealing with Dragons.) These are the books I know that has awesome dragons in them, please tell me which one I should read next, or feel free to add other books onto this list: 
- A Game of Thrones, 
- The Hobbit, 
- Seraphina, 
- Eon, 
- Dragonflight and 
- His Majesty's Dragon. 

Okay, let's get on with Scorched and why I want to say Dracarys to it.



Disclaimer: This is a did-not-finish for me. I have this book a fair shot (35% - 120 pages out of 340) before giving up.

Now,


1) The main characters are unimaginative. Trinity represents 90% of the female characters in YA. She falls in the category of 



You can easily mistake her for Clary from The Mortal Instruments series or Meghan from The Iron Fey series. And guess what all those books have in common? They didn't receive good ratings from me. Here she is being cheesy and dependent on a guy she just met:

"Her heart stuttered. He was staying? He was choosing to wait? Even though he said it could be dangerous? Even though he needed to protect the egg? That was, as he said, his number-one priority. His so-called mission to save the world. So, why one Earth would he choose to stay? To keep himself and the egg in danger?

She bit her lower lip. There was only one explanation. For her." 
- Page 48 of ARC.

JFC, grow a backbone, would you? This just screams insta-love and a weak character. 

And while we're still on the topic of generic characters, let me show you how Trinity describes Connor: 

"But Connor was different. The travesties he'd witnessed had made him strong, not scared. Determined, not demoralized." - Page 83 of ARC. 

Can you imagine if the Book Police told the neighbourhood watch to look for a man that fits the above description? They might round up 85% of the male population in YAville.

And the troubles don't stop there. This book had parts that made no sense to me. Maybe it's just poorly edited, because it is an ARC. But I'll show you what I mean:

2) Disconnections upon disconnections.
So you said the government is after us? Oh, okay. I guess we shouldn't be afraid of them if they all did this:

"...three men in black swarmed the empty lot behind them. The men screamed furiously as they all tried to scale the enclosure at once, succeeding only in knocking one another down." - Page 40 of ARC. 

LOL wut? Was it Rookie Humiliation Day and I was just not aware?

Oh, and we also shouldn't go back to where I live because the people who are after us could already be there. And they are after this egg? Then explain to me why this happened?

"She glared at the egg out in the living room, sitting innocently on the coffee table, where Connor had left it." - Page 46 of ARC.

Wait. You just left it sitting on the table? Oh wait. I guess it's because you already locked the door. 

"She heard a deadbolt click into place. 'If we're going to be waiting here, I'd like to reinforce things a bit,' [said Connor]." - Page 48 of ARC. 

YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T EVEN LOCK THE DOOR? I'm seriously hoping these disconnections are there because secretly Connor is evil and these are tricks he used to get Trinity to trust him. But later on, when they had to leave, Mari Mancusi seems to have forgotten to write in the part where they grab the egg and leave. I was horrified because they had just left the egg on the coffee table. I was relieved to find out later that somehow the egg was in the backpack, even when the author didn't describe how the egg got there...False alarm, guys. 

3) This book was just not exciting. In tense moments, the anxiety a reader should feel is no where to be found. It's either disrupted by Trinity acting stupid, or by some cheesy hand-holding, or by a long paragraph filled with lots of questions. We've seen it before in the quote I included in 1). Now that had extra cheese AND never ending questions. This following one is also a downer - warning, sort of spoiler-ish:

"She was alone.

How could he do this to her? Just dump her at the end of the world - with no explanation as to what she was supposed to do? Where she was supposed to go? Was this simply a vision of an event that had already taken place? Or has he actually sent her forward in time? Was she safe and sound in her former home, still gripping Connor's hands? Or was she really here, her life in danger?" - Pages 85/86 of ARC.

When you actually have to put "Was she really here, her life in danger?" down on a page, that really disperses the tension. 

-takes deep breath- Okay. That's it. That is my rant. I appreciate Mari Mancusi for writing a dragon book, because FYEAH DRAGONS. But the writing just doesn't live up to my standards.

P.S.: The main character's name is Trinity Foxx. Does that not sound like a stripper/porn star name to you? AND, the nickname people in the future gives her is Fire Kissed. Uh, honey, that is not fierce, but cringe-worthy to me.

In fact, it's almost as bad as...Moon Moon.