BOOK+REVIEW

__** //HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS// BOOK REVIEW **__ media type="file" key="devynk-bookreview-2012.mp3"

Most of the time, I am very in love with reading, and will take any chance I can get to take part in it. As I wandered into the school library, a certain books beautiful blue and purple dragon cover art caught my eye and intrigued me. I picked up the novel, //Here, There be Dragons//, and instantly felt the need to check it out, as I read the synopsis on the back cover. The first thirty pages kept me interested, eyebrows raised, waving away any distractions coming my way. Ten more pages in, I started to sink, uninterested, into my seat. After about five more, I was half asleep from the boredom brought on by this piece of writing.

I wish that I could say something good about this novel, but in writing, I don’t force myself to lie. I am immensely disappointed with this piece as a whole, but I think the part of it that I hated the most was the style of writing. //Here, There be Dragons,// by James .A. Owen, is written from a third person perspective, but as opposed to following the main protagonist, the novel portrays the feelings and actions of all characters, keeping the reader bored, without a hook, or anything to get their attention really, and making the reading of this novel feel more like a task than a privilege. In addition to the lack of hinting and wonder added to a characters actions, Owen attempts to create mystery and conflict with these characters, only to instantly reveal the solutions, reasons and actions behind them, again, leaving the reader bored and uninterested. And lastly, as if all these weren’t bad enough, Owen has shown an obvious lack of creative ability, in nor being able to create his own characters. Save the three or four that he actually did make up, all Owen has done is take the protagonists of famous novels, and their stories, put them out of context, and call them his own. Very upsetting.

As mentioned before, the characters of this novel are not only wildly uninteresting, non- attention grabbing, and just plain boring, but the characters that Owen has stolen from famous, and wonderful works of art are being portrayed as unintelligent, as well as unnecessarily fake, as well as being robbed of their real personalities and literary magic. And as if the heroes aren’t bad enough, there are still the villains to bring into play. With almost every part of this novel, Owen strongly displays his lack of skill in writing, but here he shows a small bit of imagination, which both makes less sense than the rest, and is almost worse. The main villains infiltrating //Here, There be Dragons,// are a true portrayal of Owens twisted, unfocused, and unimaginative mind. He calls them Wendigo, men who drank the blood of their best friends and loved ones in order to become half dog, half man. Once they are half dog, they go, by choice, to work as cannibalistic servants and henchman to the Winter King, the big villain in the story, who is going around to different parts of their sacred magical world, casting shadows on lands, and hereby deleting their maps from the atlas of their world. It all makes about as much sense as its summary, and although it seems a bit interesting, even these parts aren’t in the slightest, well, at least they aren’t to any decent person older than about eight years old. Of course, the lack of anything interesting in these characters doesn’t surprise me, considering the entirety of the rest of this novel.

Would I recommend this book to others? Almost. The only circumstance in which I would ever tell another person to read this “piece” of literature, or piece of trash is probably better suited, is if the reader was a young child, who was very patient with their literature, and was a very committed reader. Unfortunately, even if this was the case, I wouldn’t be able to give any recommendation, due to Owen’s both crude and vulgar use of dialogue, which is both pointless and ridiculous. There is absolutely no circumstance in which I would recommend a novel of this reading or intelligence level to any person who is not a child, or any person that is even the least bit educated in English language or literature. Beyond that, any person with an imagination or sense of creativity can literally hear their poor brain cells screaming as they live out the last few seconds of their life, due to the lack of imagination and knowledge used in the creation of this novel.

My apologies if this was not the average, positive book review, but unfortunately I cannot find one positive piece of insight on this novel, and trust me, I’ve tried. I find it absolutely unbelievable that this author has written something near five or six other books in this series. Both would I love to meet a person with enough creativity and patience to sit through that much of this horridness, and the man who is horribly cocky enough to dedicate two whole pages in the beginning of his own novel, to himself, to talk about how wonderful his repulsive mind is for being able to spit out a novel of this literary level.