Book Review: Dragon Outcast by E.E. Knight

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Spoiler Free Summary:  Dragon Outcast by E.E. Knight is the third story in the Age of Fire series. It’s the story of a hatchling who betrayed his whole family and seeks to find some way to redeem himself.

Cover image taken from the book’s Goodreads page for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Character:  The Copper is one of the greatest story arcs I read. He does some terrible things, but then he starts working toward being something better. The more one hates a character, the more rewarding it is when you see that character truly change, and this story has that.

Exposition: This might just be my favorite book in the series. It’s paced so perfectly, and the emotion of the story just has you riding a perfect literary roller coaster. If you read the series just to read this book, you’ve made a wise decision.

Worldbuilding: Just as with the last two books, this book starts out much the same. Naturally, this book is told from The Copper’s point of view. In doing this, Knight takes one rather typical story of a young dragon hero and turns it into a whole world filled with deep characters, who are all main characters in their own right. Each character also takes you to different places to see different races and creatures. This story is no different. The coolest part here though, is we get to see an earnest dragon society.

Dialogue: The dialogue of this book isn’t as good as the last one. I don’t necessarily mind. Once we see a huge cast like this begin to expand, it has to get pretty hard to have people stand out. That’s not to say the dialogue is bad by any means, it’s just not as awesome as it was in the last book because not all the characters sounded unique in my imagination.  

Image by Ebert Studio taken from the Penguin Random House website bio for the author. This image was taken for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Description: This, however, is probably the best in the series as well. There are just more cool places and more cool characters to meet. Seeing more of the world in which this story takes place just activates the imagination more.

Overall: I say again, this is probably my favorite book in the series. It’s just amazing to see how The Copper starts in bitter anger and evolves to become who he becomes (trying to avoid spoilers). The beauty of it is one doesn’t have to read the other stories to enjoy this one. Readers can actually start with Books 1, 2, or 3 and still get a grate stand-alone story. However, I’m of the opinion that if you read this one first, you won’t be able to stop yourself from reading the rest.

Thanks for reading

Matt

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