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Dragonkin, Book 1

Dragonkin, Book 1

List Price: $6.99
Your Price: $6.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dragon Lovers Will Love This Story
Review: Being a dragon lover and believe that they do exist on some realm it was wonderful to see dragons portrayed as the gentle and thought based creatures they are.

This story blew me away and found myself very caught up in the story and could not get away from it. I am the type of person that likes to be read to while my wife love to read to others and be animated and both of us were just captured by the story from the beginning to the end.

This is one of the few books that I plan on reading to my kids, it's just that simple.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good family fun
Review: Dragonkin contains something fairly original for the fantasy genre, which is both good and bad. The story comes from the points-of-view of various fantasy and animal species ranging from dragons and griffins to unicorns and hummingbirds. This gives the novel a fealing of uniqueness despite the rather run-of-the-mill fantasy plotline it uses to advance the story. The problem is, these creatures have such human tendencies that they might as well have just been human from the beginning. In the long run, though, I thought this actually strengthened the story by giving it a Disney-like quality that gave me a frame of reference to build from that a truly unique point-of-view may not have been able to do.

What keeps me from offering a five star rating is just how human the animals are. While I can accept that the fantasy races have human qualities, hearing about bears and wolves building houses and such, just like humans, was at times a little too human. Had these and other real-world animals acted like animals, this story could have been considered a classic.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful Book! Robin is a wonderful story teller!
Review: I bought this book on a whim because I was intrigued by the idea of a book from the point of view of the dragons and mythical creatures of fantasy. It turned out to be a great book and a wonderful story!! I even preordered the sequel! :)

Robin Wayne Bailey is a wonderful story teller and the characters are very loveable! I could easily imagine Marina (introduced in the prologue) recalling stories to her child of the adventures of the animals of Wyrvenwood. People who argue that the "real life" based jokes are "stupid" are taking things meant to cause the reader to smile a little to seriously. Besides I can recount numerous other fantasy novels that do similar things, The Xanth Series by Piers Anthony for instance!

Throughout the book the animals discover more about life outside Wyrvenwood, humans, each other, and ultimately themselves. The reader can really feel for the characters and grow to love them!

"There isn't a drop of magic left in the world, my friend, and yet I wish there were. We long for it, and we hope, sometimes we dream that maybe over the next hill, or in the next valley, or on some high mountaintop there's still just a little bit left - if we could just find it." -- Marian the Unicorn.

Thank you Robin, for showing us just a little drop of that magic in your wonderful book and allowing us to dream a little more!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful Book! Robin is a wonderful story teller!
Review: I bought this book on a whim because I was intrigued by the idea of a book from the point of view of the dragons and mythical creatures of fantasy. It turned out to be a great book and a wonderful story!! I even preordered the sequel! :)

Robin Wayne Bailey is a wonderful story teller and the characters are very loveable! I could easily imagine Marina (introduced in the prologue) recalling stories to her child of the adventures of the animals of Wyrvenwood. People who argue that the "real life" based jokes are "stupid" are taking things meant to cause the reader to smile a little to seriously. Besides I can recount numerous other fantasy novels that do similar things, The Xanth Series by Piers Anthony for instance!

Throughout the book the animals discover more about life outside Wyrvenwood, humans, each other, and ultimately themselves. The reader can really feel for the characters and grow to love them!

"There isn't a drop of magic left in the world, my friend, and yet I wish there were. We long for it, and we hope, sometimes we dream that maybe over the next hill, or in the next valley, or on some high mountaintop there's still just a little bit left - if we could just find it." -- Marian the Unicorn.

Thank you Robin, for showing us just a little drop of that magic in your wonderful book and allowing us to dream a little more!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Delightful Discovery!
Review: I found this completely by accident while looking for another book, but when I saw the cover and the price I couldn't pass it up. Am I glad I didn't. It's wonderful! The dragons are as fully developed as any human characters could be. So are all the other creatures, the gryphons in a nastier but fun way. The story is almost stolen, though, by Bumble the Hummingbird. At times this book is almost heart-breaking, but at other times it makes you laugh out loud. The forest of Wyvernwood is a very interesting and mysterious place with all sorts of fantasy creatures and real animals live together. I read it to myself, but I fully intend to read it again to my daughters.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An imaginative and fun world of fantasy!
Review: I really liked Dragonkin. I'm new into the sci/fi fantasy genre of books (though I'm a huge dragon fan) and I think this is a really good book, especially for a newcomer like myself. It takes place in an area known as Wyvernwood, where Stormfire, the leader of the Dragonkin, led all fantastic and mythical creatures. It is a place of beauty, of comfort, of refuge. At least until the men of Angmar venture into the borders of Wyvernwood. The story follows Stormfire's three hatchlings, Chan, Harrow, and Luna; as well as an unlikely trio of friends composed of the last unicorn, an artist dragon, and a forgetful hummingbird. A previous reviewer said that the characters, esepcailly the hummingbird, Bumble, use very modern catch-phrases and sayings which don't belong in a fantasy world. But I disagree, the language of the characters is modern, not shakespearian, and the modern phrases bring humor into the story too. Another review mentioned the editing going downhill in the last quarter of the book, which I unfortunately agree with. Hopefully Mr. Bailey will choose a different editor on Dragonkin: Book II. My only complaint is that the story seemed like it was more about the side story of the unicorn, the artist dragon, and hummingbird than Chan, Luna, and Harrow, though they all tie in together in the long run. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am very excited about the sequel.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An imaginative and fun world of fantasy!
Review: I really liked Dragonkin. I'm new into the sci/fi fantasy genre of books (though I'm a huge dragon fan) and I think this is a really good book, especially for a newcomer like myself. It takes place in an area known as Wyvernwood, where Stormfire, the leader of the Dragonkin, led all fantastic and mythical creatures. It is a place of beauty, of comfort, of refuge. At least until the men of Angmar venture into the borders of Wyvernwood. The story follows Stormfire's three hatchlings, Chan, Harrow, and Luna; as well as an unlikely trio of friends composed of the last unicorn, an artist dragon, and a forgetful hummingbird. A previous reviewer said that the characters, esepcailly the hummingbird, Bumble, use very modern catch-phrases and sayings which don't belong in a fantasy world. But I disagree, the language of the characters is modern, not shakespearian, and the modern phrases bring humor into the story too. Another review mentioned the editing going downhill in the last quarter of the book, which I unfortunately agree with. Hopefully Mr. Bailey will choose a different editor on Dragonkin: Book II. My only complaint is that the story seemed like it was more about the side story of the unicorn, the artist dragon, and hummingbird than Chan, Luna, and Harrow, though they all tie in together in the long run. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am very excited about the sequel.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fun, but something is out of order ...
Review: Is this book an epic fantasy? No, but it sure is a lot of fun to read. The entire book is taken from the point of view of the mythological creatures rather than from man's point of view - a wonderfully intriguing switch that grabbed my attention and held it throughout the entire storyline. Surprisingly, the author chose to have one of the most original creatures (Bumble) who regularly contributes some of the most hilarious comedic relief scenes in the book utter lines that simply could not exist in that fantasy world. Lines like, "One if by land, two if by sea" for example that clearly come from revolutionary American history are so out of place that it breaks the reader out of the fantasy world and unavoidably diminishes the entire work. Also quite surprising were the many grammatical and typographical errors in the last quarter of the book. It's almost as if the author tired of checking his work, or worse, that the editor simply didn't care about the quality of this published work. Overall, if not for the two things I've listed I would have given the book 4-Stars for originality and sheer fun, but in the light of these negatives, I must go with only 3-Stars. Should you read it? Sure, it's fun. But, don't expect perfection, just plain fun.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fun, but something is out of order ...
Review: Is this book an epic fantasy? No, but it sure is a lot of fun to read. The entire book is taken from the point of view of the mythological creatures rather than from man's point of view - a wonderfully intriguing switch that grabbed my attention and held it throughout the entire storyline. Surprisingly, the author chose to have one of the most original creatures (Bumble) who regularly contributes some of the most hilarious comedic relief scenes in the book utter lines that simply could not exist in that fantasy world. Lines like, "One if by land, two if by sea" for example that clearly come from revolutionary American history are so out of place that it breaks the reader out of the fantasy world and unavoidably diminishes the entire work. Also quite surprising were the many grammatical and typographical errors in the last quarter of the book. It's almost as if the author tired of checking his work, or worse, that the editor simply didn't care about the quality of this published work. Overall, if not for the two things I've listed I would have given the book 4-Stars for originality and sheer fun, but in the light of these negatives, I must go with only 3-Stars. Should you read it? Sure, it's fun. But, don't expect perfection, just plain fun.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A terrible disappointment.
Review: Now, I love dragons and books about dragons, but this book is so bad that it completely overrides that fact. Robin Wayne Bailey should be ashamed for having written such drivel, and iBooks should be ashamed for ever publishing it, or its sequel.

I found that this book reads like a poorly-composed (and poorly-edited) story that was written by an eighteen-year-old for his freshman composition class. It tries to be a serious tale of magic and emotion, but the whole thing is simply devoid of any worthwhile purpose. The characters are all predictable puppets with no true depth to them at all. I found that the only character I could adequately realize in my mind was a minor character named Canaan, a lowlife of a human who was the only one who actually seemed realistic in any way. The plotline, while it's at least somewhat original, still feels contrived, and at times it often seems as though there was no previous thought or planning whatsoever on the part of the author.

Speaking of the author, I have no idea how this person ever managed to win any awards for his writing. To be frank, Bailey is a moron. He is one of the most ignorant authors I have ever read. He makes it a point that alligators are amphibians instead of reptiles, when it is most assuredly the other way around. He has a unicorn talking about having coupons, and "sending away" for things. He has a hummingbird who makes constant, pointless references to modern concepts, snakes who talk like gigolos (which really annoyed me), and griffins and dragons who can't make up their minds over how to feel about anything. All of these things were extremely distracting. Much of the dialogue doesn't fit at all with the supposed time period or with the characters' personalities, and Bailey obviously knows very little to nothing about particular creatures and species, especially their anatomy (i.e. griffins and birds do NOT have teeth; bobcats aren't the size of lions, nor do they live in prides; and one cannot glide by folding one's wings!). Finally, and I concede this is a very minor point, a lot of the characters have pretty dumb-sounding names.

Overall, this book is simply one of the worst I've ever read, and I was highly disappointed by it. I expected epic fantasy involving dragons, but instead I got a misinformed, rambling Disney movie of a novel, involving various beings who may as well have been human, given their behavior and speech. I would not recommend this book to anyone who reads above a first-grade reading level; not even to die-hard dragon-lovers. Basically, if you thought "Ice Age" was a really smart and meaningful film, then you might like this book. Otherwise, leave it on the shelf.


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