The Dawning of a New Age: Dragons of a New Age, Volume One [Mass Market Paperback]

At my own admission, this book began very slowly. The first 100 pages seemed plaqued by choppy writing, and seemingly overly fantastic ideas. Given this is a fantasy book, I still found some of the happenings in the book a bit hard to swallow.
My biggest critism of the book,however, has to do with the how willingly the author let years go by without description(literaly decades). It seemed to me that the amount of time that passed in te early portion of this book really didn't mean much to Mrs. Rabe. I have to say I was seriously starting to doubt whether or not I would finish this one.

All the critism aside, after the first 100 pages or so the plot settled down and the writting began to become enjoyable. I was finally able to get involved with the characters and wanted to see what would happen to them next. By the end of the book I was left wanting more. When all is said and done, that to me is the most important part of a book in a series.

I really admire the guts that it took for Jean to step out on a limb and write this series. I've found that many DL fans can be very critical, and unmoving in thier willingness to branch out and discover new things. Jean did something that was very difficult, in filling the gap that is the beginning of the Fifth Age. Kodus to her!

All in all, I think this book is a enjoyable read that will leave most readers wanting more. For those diehard DL fans it is a must read. Looking back, my gripe about the passage of time allows, hopefully, other authors to fill the gap with other tells of heroism and valor.

Don't go into this book expecting the kind of greatness that is the Chronicles series or maybe The Legand of Huma(my personal favorite), because you won't find it. There isn't a ton of depth and you probably won't develop a strong attachment to the characters. DoNA starts slowly, but levels off into a nice story. I believe if you press on and overlook the choppy writing at the begining you will leave this book pleasantly surprised. I did.

First, the gods abandon the entire world, leaving dragons to do as they wish. There's not magic left, except in magic items. Even though Dragons have enough power to clone themselves and transform landscapes, one of the main dragon characters goes on a quest to steal magic items so he can gather enough power to open a portal. Go figure.

The relationship between this dragon and his dead companion was not believeable either. "Oh, I have to resurrect my friend," but then he goes off on some tangent with a red dragon who wants to turn all humanity and the like into cattle.

In addition, the dragons are overly immense, and one of them destroys the great tower of palanthas! Preposterous!

The author, unsuccessfully, tries to gather a group of rag-tag heroes to start a new revolution. The book just gets stupider and stupider.

It's possible that this could have been good, but the whole premise obviously went south. A 2-star rating is probably fair.