Book Review: The Rage of Dragons, by Evan Winter
An Afro-themed Zero to Hero epic fantasy tale of vengeance and dragons.
Orbit, 2019, 535 pages
The Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for generations. The lucky ones are born gifted: some have the power to call down dragons, others can be magically transformed into bigger, stronger, faster killing machines.
Everyone else is fodder, destined to fight and die in the endless war. Tau Tafari wants more than this, but his plans of escape are destroyed when those closest to him are brutally murdered.
With too few gifted left the Omehi are facing genocide, but Tau cares only for revenge. Following an unthinkable path, he will strive to become the greatest swordsman to ever live, willing to die a hundred thousand times for the chance to kill three of his own people.
The Rage of Dragons launches an unmissable epic fantasy series about a world caught in an endless war and the young man who will become his people's only hope for survival.
I was listening to this as an audiobook on a long car ride. My wife, listening to music, would occasionally take her earbuds out, and at one point she commented: "There sure is an awful lot of fighting in this book. Every time I listen in, it's some dudes fighting."
That's a pretty good description of this book. Yes, it's mostly some dudes fighting.
The Rage of Dragons is another epic fantasy that started out indie-published but acquired such a following that it was picked up by Orbit. It's an Afro-themed epic fantasy story of a very particular type: unoriginal, checks off a long list of tropes, yet really satisfying for a certain kind of reader, as the author knows what kind of story he's telling and he tells it well.
In this case, he's writing a very straightforward male power fantasy. Our protagonist, Tau Tafari, starts out life as a "Lesser" in the Omehi's oppressive, stratified caste system. Raised as a warrior, he's just another spear-carrier (literally) for the Omehi, or "Chosen." We get some early scenes where it's demonstrated that Omehi nobles are assholes who treat Lessers like nobles usually treat lessers in fantasy novels (and in real life), and then it's Tau's turn as he watches his father get murdered by a noble. He of course swears vengeance, dedicates himself to becoming the best warrior ever, and spends the rest of the book (in fight after fight after fight after fight after fight...) becoming the best warrior ever. Along the way he makes friends, learns things about the Omehi and their magic system, and gets to bang his hot childhood sweetheart who's become one of the Gifted (sorceresses who can call on the power of the demon realm to do all kinds of epic magic shit).
So if you've ever fantasized about spending your entire life preparing for the day when you can say, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," but with added dragons, this is the book for you.
On the other hand, if fight after fight after fight after fight bores you, it is probably not the book for you.
It's not all fighting. We get some worldbuilding, but the world of the Omehi is pretty thinly described right now. In the prologue, we learn that the Omehi arrived here (on the peninsula where they now live) on ships about 200 years ago, having fled their home continent, the implied reason being they were on the losing side of some political conflict. They found hostile natives, and secured a foothold only by being able to use magic to "Entreat" the fire demons - dragons - to torch their enemies.
So, the Omehi are colonizers! For most of the book, the natives they've been fighting are treated as a bunch of marauding savages, but over the course of the story it becomes apparent that, uh, they might actually have legitimate reasons for trying to wipe out the Omehi. The problem is that they are so numerous that they are close to being able to do so. The Omehi have various forms of sorcery, besides summoning dragons, which have allowed them to hold out this long, but their sorcerer caste has been whittled down over generations of fighting.
So you'd think facing an existential threat, they'd all unite and stop this petty inter-caste bickering, but of course they don't do that. Instead, most of the middle of the book is about Tau and his fellow Lessers fighting elaborate wargames against nobles, supposedly for training purposes but they put massive resources into these "games" that would be better devoted to actually fighting a war, and of course the nobles frequently mow down Lessers during these games to keep them in their place, never mind that that sort of defeats the purpose of all this "training."
The author has worked out a fairly elaborate magic system, definitely taking a page from the Brandon Sanderson school of RPG-inspired magical worldbuilding. Tau, being the story's Chosen One, naturally figures out how to subvert the rules and become capable of doing things he shouldn't be able to do and kill opponents he shouldn't be able to kill. He's a vengeance-fueled killing machine and his childhood sweetheart becomes a powerful sorceress.
This book does not have a happy ending, and in fact it's not really an ending, it's the first book in a trilogy, so The Rage of Dragons ends with a bloody To Be Continued.
I wasn't entirely sure about the hook going in, and it took a while for me to warm up to this book (the endless duels and skirmishes really do get a little tedious), but it's fun and Tau is an awesome Farmboy of Destiny and there are dragons. So I will almost certainly read the next book.
My complete list of book reviews.
Orbit, 2019, 535 pages
The Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for generations. The lucky ones are born gifted: some have the power to call down dragons, others can be magically transformed into bigger, stronger, faster killing machines.
Everyone else is fodder, destined to fight and die in the endless war. Tau Tafari wants more than this, but his plans of escape are destroyed when those closest to him are brutally murdered.
With too few gifted left the Omehi are facing genocide, but Tau cares only for revenge. Following an unthinkable path, he will strive to become the greatest swordsman to ever live, willing to die a hundred thousand times for the chance to kill three of his own people.
The Rage of Dragons launches an unmissable epic fantasy series about a world caught in an endless war and the young man who will become his people's only hope for survival.
I was listening to this as an audiobook on a long car ride. My wife, listening to music, would occasionally take her earbuds out, and at one point she commented: "There sure is an awful lot of fighting in this book. Every time I listen in, it's some dudes fighting."
That's a pretty good description of this book. Yes, it's mostly some dudes fighting.
The Rage of Dragons is another epic fantasy that started out indie-published but acquired such a following that it was picked up by Orbit. It's an Afro-themed epic fantasy story of a very particular type: unoriginal, checks off a long list of tropes, yet really satisfying for a certain kind of reader, as the author knows what kind of story he's telling and he tells it well.
In this case, he's writing a very straightforward male power fantasy. Our protagonist, Tau Tafari, starts out life as a "Lesser" in the Omehi's oppressive, stratified caste system. Raised as a warrior, he's just another spear-carrier (literally) for the Omehi, or "Chosen." We get some early scenes where it's demonstrated that Omehi nobles are assholes who treat Lessers like nobles usually treat lessers in fantasy novels (and in real life), and then it's Tau's turn as he watches his father get murdered by a noble. He of course swears vengeance, dedicates himself to becoming the best warrior ever, and spends the rest of the book (in fight after fight after fight after fight after fight...) becoming the best warrior ever. Along the way he makes friends, learns things about the Omehi and their magic system, and gets to bang his hot childhood sweetheart who's become one of the Gifted (sorceresses who can call on the power of the demon realm to do all kinds of epic magic shit).
So if you've ever fantasized about spending your entire life preparing for the day when you can say, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," but with added dragons, this is the book for you.
On the other hand, if fight after fight after fight after fight bores you, it is probably not the book for you.
It's not all fighting. We get some worldbuilding, but the world of the Omehi is pretty thinly described right now. In the prologue, we learn that the Omehi arrived here (on the peninsula where they now live) on ships about 200 years ago, having fled their home continent, the implied reason being they were on the losing side of some political conflict. They found hostile natives, and secured a foothold only by being able to use magic to "Entreat" the fire demons - dragons - to torch their enemies.
So, the Omehi are colonizers! For most of the book, the natives they've been fighting are treated as a bunch of marauding savages, but over the course of the story it becomes apparent that, uh, they might actually have legitimate reasons for trying to wipe out the Omehi. The problem is that they are so numerous that they are close to being able to do so. The Omehi have various forms of sorcery, besides summoning dragons, which have allowed them to hold out this long, but their sorcerer caste has been whittled down over generations of fighting.
So you'd think facing an existential threat, they'd all unite and stop this petty inter-caste bickering, but of course they don't do that. Instead, most of the middle of the book is about Tau and his fellow Lessers fighting elaborate wargames against nobles, supposedly for training purposes but they put massive resources into these "games" that would be better devoted to actually fighting a war, and of course the nobles frequently mow down Lessers during these games to keep them in their place, never mind that that sort of defeats the purpose of all this "training."
The author has worked out a fairly elaborate magic system, definitely taking a page from the Brandon Sanderson school of RPG-inspired magical worldbuilding. Tau, being the story's Chosen One, naturally figures out how to subvert the rules and become capable of doing things he shouldn't be able to do and kill opponents he shouldn't be able to kill. He's a vengeance-fueled killing machine and his childhood sweetheart becomes a powerful sorceress.
This book does not have a happy ending, and in fact it's not really an ending, it's the first book in a trilogy, so The Rage of Dragons ends with a bloody To Be Continued.
I wasn't entirely sure about the hook going in, and it took a while for me to warm up to this book (the endless duels and skirmishes really do get a little tedious), but it's fun and Tau is an awesome Farmboy of Destiny and there are dragons. So I will almost certainly read the next book.
My complete list of book reviews.