Book Review: When We Were Dragons: A Young Adult Fantasy Adventure

Title: When We Were Dragons: A Young Adult Fantasy Adventure

Author: Brandon Berntson

Length: 127 Pages

Genre: Fantasy & Science Fiction

Amazon

Not sure where to start with this one. It’s a confusing read. Thought it started out well, but then went downhill from there.

 

 

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My Rating: 3 Lit Fireflies

Paramis is a world that is inhabited by dragons, and other beings. These dragons are able to change into a mortal form, but differ from humans. Justin Silas happens to be one of these dragons. When you think of dragons, you think of prideful, powerful, fire-breathing beasts. They’re similar here. However, these dragons are exceptionally nice. They have a very innocent guardian/angelic type personality. I found it was quite refreshing to see such innocence from them. Normally I’d expect dragons to have much tougher personalities than the dragons on Paramis, but it seemed to work well in this book.

Paramis and Earth collide. Reading this, you would expect all living life to vanquish. But no… The planets sustained some major damage, but not enough to mess up its surface. Life remained, food intact, and even newly made houses made before the collision were in excellent condition. Though bits of both planets combined its scenery. This was explained to be the work of magic. In fact many of the unexplained questions you have in this story will have the answer being… magic. I was not a fan of this.

It is tough criticizing the many flaws this story has, without going into major spoilers. However, I do want to bring up one. English. Justin and his companion travel around, then randomly stumbling upon a family of humans, and start casually speaking to them as if there is no language barrier. These Dragons speak English? They are worlds apart, yet they happen to speak a language from Earth? Of course one can argue that magic is the answer. But even if that was the case, no humans think to question how it is possible?

Some time goes by with this family, and they begin to grow on you. I’d say up until 70% into this book, I thought to myself that this is definitely a children’s book. Something a child can read, with no heartbreak. But boy I was wrong. Out of the blue, tragedy hits. I have no problem with heartbreak and the death of characters, but the direction this book went, went downhill fast after the cabin scene. It had built up so much innocence, that it should have just stuck with it. I got the feeling the author was thinking and writing as he goes. He invested some time into a selection of characters, only to vaguely throw them away. I have found that Brandon Berntson writes a lot of horror. When We Were Dragons had the potential to be a light, refreshing read, but perhaps his root genre could explain the changed direction the book took. I could not help but feel disappointed.

I haven’t read Brandon Brentsons other writings, but feel he could improve or already has improved as an author. This book came out in 2013, so time has passed. I’m not a fan of horror, so I won’t be reading his current horror books. I am however interested in seeing if his Fantasy/SciFi skills have improved. His character development and conversations were good. I do hope his writings feel less rushed and more planned out, in the future.