1.5 out of 5 stars
Jake lives on a dragon wildlife preserve with his scientist father, helping to manage the park and the gift shop and guide the tourists through the exhibits. When he gets a chance to go on a solo trip through the preserve, Jake finds a dying dragon, killed by a poacher. She has just given birth to a clutch of dragon babies, and only one dragonlet survived. Jake takes the baby dragon with him, barely keeping it alive, and it becomes the biggest secret that he can’t keep.
This book was a huge disappointment. I have loved other books by this author, but this was just awful. The stream-of-consciousness writing style is completely different from her other books. I hated the main character and his annoying narrative voice.
The plot is drawn out and slow and boring. There was no reason for this book to be so long with so many boring details. And the actual events in the plot when some action actually happens are buried in Jake’s long rambling stories about random details and old memories and boring politics and weird family relationships.
The pacing is so insane. It’s like, here’s a big action moment when a huge dragon is attacking… let me take a moment and explain to you my complex feelings of hatred for my dad’s boss. So random.
There’s no structure to the plot. It jumps around all over the place with flashbacks and recollections. There’s no build-up to a big moment or a proper denouement. Right when you would think, aha, this is the big ending. No wait, there’s still 50 more pages of rambling. 30 pages later… okay THIS must be the actual ending. No wait, there’s still an interminable epilogue where he thinks he’s being haunted by a dragon’s ghost.
Dude.
It really went off the rails there at the end.
There is also quite a bit of profanity in this book, and some other inappropriate content.
And I had to hear WAY more about dragon poop than I ever wanted to know. Why were there so many mentions (in detail) of dragons doing their business??? WHY?
This book has been screened on the Screen It First website: https://screenitfirst.com/book/dragonhaven-1352020
