Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What a distressing, distressing book.


My first reaction after reading the last page was DISSECTION. I wanted to put this book on my cutting board, nicely slice it into three neat parts, set aside the first and third parts which are keepers, chop the middle into tiny, tiny pieces and throw them to the pigeons who lurk outside in my gardern waiting for something to eat.
Ah, the frustration!

But let's start with what I found amazing. I fell in love with the world building. The Oriental setting is a total winner for me and I felt catapulted into this mix of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha kind of world. Lovely. I loved how the author used the dragon element in relation to the story. I am getting a bit weary of the whole Eragon's approach to dragons, so this new cut was really welcome. True, the world Goodman creates is pretty articulated and not really easy to digest at first but eventually I got used to it and I stopped asking myself questions on how the dragons' system worked.
Also, the whole transgender theme was appreciated, even though this brings me to the shredding of pages.

What really irked me, what frustrated me in the middle section, were the characters. No, scratch that. Just one. I could have strangled Eon on various occasions. Eon is, evidently, not the sharpest tool in the shed. The whole thing with the Sun drug and the ghost tea? I think 100% of readers realized what was wrong with it after about 100 pages. But Eon/a distressingly and quite stubbornly keeps on f*cking up for about another 350 pages. WTF??? I'm not sure she deserved what she got. If I had been her dragon, I would have incinerated her by page 200.

EVENTUALLY, she painstakingly realizes what had been clear to the whole wide world for a while but yeah, she's not the most likable of characters in my opinion - slow on the uptake, a coward and quite the liar. And with her behavior, she gets killed a few people and puts EVERYBODY in deep sh*t.

Still, great book, great story and hopefully Eon/a will redeem him/herself in the sequel that I already ordered.





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