If you haven’t had a chance to read Evan Winter’s Rage of Dragons yet, you really should. Everyone’s talking about it and you want to be one of the cool kids who’s read it before Evan becomes the next big thing (and he’s well on his way up there!).
I inhaled this one a few months ago in-between my son’s dance classes, and haven’t had a chance to review it until now. It’s not often I get to read books with the pure, white-hot rage against oppression built into it (another great book on this from Orbit is the upcoming Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender). To get the chance to live through the eyes of a hero not often seen in mainstream, and then to feel him rise to power after being powerless for so long is… I can’t even explain it in words. There’s something I’ve noticed after reading many of the PoC-authored books out recently (because now there’s suddenly so much more than ever before, which is wonderful, because heck YES we can write our stories too, and heck yes we should have even more)–they make me feel less alone, less like a ghost peering through somebody else’s window. Tau’s struggles resonated with me in a way that every other farmboy epic fantasy book I’ve read so far hasn’t: sometimes when you’re down on the ground and you’re being kicked within every inch of your life, all you want to do is tear heads off and watch the guts fly.
Read it if you, too, have been looking for that sort of catharsis your whole life. Or read it because Evan is a great guy and deserves all the praise he’s been getting lately. Or just read it, even if all you’re looking for is a great, entertaining, adrenaline rush–this book is one of my favourites this year, and it really should be yours, too.
