Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Dragon Boy by Donald Samson



My dad and I go to Barnes and Noble whenever we get bored. They have a Starbucks in there and we buy drinks and just talk. It’s nice. After we finish our drinks, we usually will go look at books. One of my favorite things to do, by the way. Anyway, in the front of Barnes and Noble, Donald Samson - author of the Star Trilogy - was signing off copies of his first two books. So my amazing father bought me the first book of the Star trilogy and had it signed. Anyway, I started it a couple months ago, and I just finished it.

Title: The Dragon Boy
Author: Donald Samson
Number of Pages: 245
Published by: The Association of Waldorf Schools
Rating: 3/5

Summery: Orphaned twice by the time he was nine, he was living on the streets and did not even know his own name. He was not allowed to set foot in the one place he was determined to find work. To complete the disaster of his young life, he was in love. The object of his affections was Star, an immense, emerald-green dragon. But here good fortune finally smiled upon him:

Star was a Luck Dragon.
Suddenly he was admitted as a barn boy into the elite Dragon Compound. He was given three warm meals a day, work, and even a name. And best of all, Star took him on as his own secret apprentice.


Review: There’s no denying that Donald Samson is a good writer. His flow and overall vocabulary was great. So the writing wasn’t an issue. Though, some of the dialogue was a bit strange. Straw (our main character) would respond to a question he didn’t want to answer by saying “Oh gee”. This is just a small issue, but something that stuck out to me no less. Other than this, his writing was flawless.

My main issues with this story were the characters and the storyline. Straw was very one dimensional. There wasn’t a lot to him, other than that he missed his grandmother and was hopelessly in love with the dragon, Star. I believe the author could have done so much more with developing our main character. And the same goes for most of the characters in the book. Star (the dragon) was a character that I would have really liked to know more about. He obviously has an interesting past with Straw’s grandmother, Galifalia. Now this is portraying more to the storyline, but I would have really liked to read about the past lives of Straw’s grandmother and the dragon. It is only briefly mentioned that Galifalia made the dragon fall in love with her. But just that had me thinking about Galifalia’s and the dragons relationship and what exactly went on when they went on what is referred to in the story as ‘The Advanture‘.

Overall, this book was decent. But I would end up putting the book down and not picking it up again for weeks. Not a lot went on for the first half of the story. The last half of it is when it gets good. But this is just my opinion. If you like books about dragons and knights and such, you may like this book. I will probably end up reading the second book in the Star Trilogy because I am curious as to where Donald Samson is going with this series.

You can learn more about The Star Trilogy on the author's website here.
Third book of 2010

6 comments:

Helen said...

Great review, Brianne. It sounds like an interesting book.

By the way, I've got an award for you. :)
http://helenlovesbooks.blogspot.com/2010/01/happy-101-awardhonest-scrap-award.html

Jen at Introverted Reader said...

That's a nice thing to do with your dad.

This book sounds a little bit like Joust by Mercedes Lackey.

Sandy said...

That sounds like a great way for father-daughter bonding. My parents would get bored waiting for me whenever I went book-shopping, lol.

This sounds a little too odd for me but nonetheless great review :)

Vampires will never lose their edge, I think. But sometimes I get tired from reading the same story over and over... hopefully The Eternal Kiss will be full of short (but amazing!) good stories ;)

Sandy said...

I was thinking about that too-I'm not sure if I'm going to do a mini-review for each short story or if I'm just going to talk about all of them in one of my usual reviews. I'll have to think about it! Or maybe I'll ask my followers for their opinion o.O

Nina said...

Sounds like a great book. I wished we had a Barnes and Noble here!!

Emma (the Expat) said...

Great review, honest and thorough.