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A review by mxhermit
The dragon of the month club by Iain Reading
4.0
Rating: 3.5 Stars
With the goofy looks on those dragons faces and the fact that I'd very much at least entertain the notion of having a pet one (before realizing how very bad an idea that would be), I had to read The Dragon of the Month Club, a middle grade novel by Ian Reading in which Ayana and Tyler find themselves in possession of the ability to summon dragons, some inspired by the holidays.
Of course, what would the fun of it all be without a little mischief and mayhem? The dragons themselves aside, things go awry when a spell goes wrong and they find themselves book hopping, sucked into the worlds of the books that Tyler has in his room. It's a bewildering adventure that could easily be a mini-series or Disney epic adventure on Saturday afternoons.
While some avenues might classify this as a young adult, and I certainly wouldn't discourage young adults from reading it, I'd probably nudge this more towards middle grade for shelving purposes in terms of the voice of the book. Ayana and Tyler, the way they interacted and moved through their story, it seems to fit better in middle grade.
Visually I think you can really get a grasp on what the dragons might be like when they appear to the conjurers. If this got a special edition I would have loved to see pop-up portions or something like that to really highlight their characteristics. It was fun imagining their natures and what they were like in our world, with these two kids that said some words and pop! Here there be dragons!
Now, there are a lot of characters in this book aside from the two main ones, especially once they get to book hopping. That makes things a bit muddy in a sense towards the middle, but I didn't mind it terribly. I've seen worse examples of huge casts crammed into tiny spaces and I think the author in this case handled them pretty well.
Readers of The Dragon of the Month Club might in the future like to check out The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane, beginning with So You Want to be a Wizard.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
With the goofy looks on those dragons faces and the fact that I'd very much at least entertain the notion of having a pet one (before realizing how very bad an idea that would be), I had to read The Dragon of the Month Club, a middle grade novel by Ian Reading in which Ayana and Tyler find themselves in possession of the ability to summon dragons, some inspired by the holidays.
Of course, what would the fun of it all be without a little mischief and mayhem? The dragons themselves aside, things go awry when a spell goes wrong and they find themselves book hopping, sucked into the worlds of the books that Tyler has in his room. It's a bewildering adventure that could easily be a mini-series or Disney epic adventure on Saturday afternoons.
While some avenues might classify this as a young adult, and I certainly wouldn't discourage young adults from reading it, I'd probably nudge this more towards middle grade for shelving purposes in terms of the voice of the book. Ayana and Tyler, the way they interacted and moved through their story, it seems to fit better in middle grade.
Visually I think you can really get a grasp on what the dragons might be like when they appear to the conjurers. If this got a special edition I would have loved to see pop-up portions or something like that to really highlight their characteristics. It was fun imagining their natures and what they were like in our world, with these two kids that said some words and pop! Here there be dragons!
Now, there are a lot of characters in this book aside from the two main ones, especially once they get to book hopping. That makes things a bit muddy in a sense towards the middle, but I didn't mind it terribly. I've seen worse examples of huge casts crammed into tiny spaces and I think the author in this case handled them pretty well.
Readers of The Dragon of the Month Club might in the future like to check out The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane, beginning with So You Want to be a Wizard.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.