Review: Dragon’s Protector by Ava Richardson

Recommended: yes
If you liked the first one, you’ll get plenty more of the world in this one!

Summary

No matter how far she rides, she can’t escape her past…

Yanna Gray has settled into Ragondian life as a Stonehaven student. Deep down she knows she is destined to become a rider trainee… And her dragon bond feels it as well. But Yanna is torn between focusing on her riding or magecraft, unsure of the right path. Choosing a discipline is the hardest decision she’s ever faced.

Until a secret from her past on Earth places all of Ragond in jeopardy…

Deadly accidents plague the realm. A shimmering new bridge inexplicably collapses. Then a dam tragically crumbles into dust. All without a trace of magic. A devastating dissonance between worlds threatens the very existence of those Yanna has grown to love and respect. Now, she must decide if family means more than just flesh and blood.

Before her new home, and everyone in it, crumbles to dust…

Thoughts

What an exciting follow-up to the series! There was still some of the same issue from the first book where exposition was not very creatively inserted and was spelled out blatantly. That wasn’t a big deal though, as the rest of the story and creativity made up for it.

Early on there’s an actual fortune telling scene predicting the future. It was a dry scene in itself with a lot of classroom instruction, but it was fun to try to predict the plot from it, and to align moments in the story with the predictions from earlier. I think I got pretty much all of the predictions wrong, though. 🤣

There were some new kinds of magic that cropped up in this book now that the initial world and characters are established. As usual, that’s TOTALLY what I’m here for and I loved the creativity in the rules and mysteries in their lore. Some of the delivery of it was a bit uncreative, with teachers literally just lecturing to students (and by proxy, me the reader), but whatever — use the medium I guess, right?

For those who were hoping for a little more of the actual dragons in the title, you’ll get it! Right from page one, in fact! There’s a lot more natural integration of the dragons as characters now that Yanna has settled in a bit and we can learn more about them. Unsurprisingly, their world is defined largely by the presence of dragons, and we start to see more of them interacting with it.

I’m so excited about the direction the story is going! I’ll definitely be reading the next (final?) book in this series! Side note: it’s super hard to write about sequels without ruining so much of the first book…

Thanks to NetGalley for a free copy. This is my honest review!