Indie Reviews – Rage of Dragons

This is part of my Indie Book Review series. For more information about this series and what my background is, go here to the first indie book review. Indie Reviews are tagged as such on my blog. Without further ado, here is my review of Rage of Dragons!

Rage of Dragons – Book One of The Burning

• Genres – Dark Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Epic Fantasy
• Contains: one sex scene, lightly detailed. Large amounts of highly detailed violence.

I first found this book while perusing the fantasy subreddit. The author, Evan Winter, had just released it and was excited to show the cover off. It is a fantastic cover. He described the book as Game of Thrones meets Dune/Gladiator. While I don’t really feel this is an accurate description (the Gladiator part is about right), it nevertheless had me curious. I picked up the book and decided to give it a read. I’m glad I did.

Rage of Dragons opens up like a lot of epic fantasy, with an event that happened years before the story and with people who will not be characters in the main story, but will lay the groundwork for the setting. The prologue begins with a battle, which in many ways will never end. The battle quickly immerses the reader in the world of The Burning: there are dragons – which shouldn’t surprise anyone with that cover; there is magic; and there is an endless war between two nations.

There’s a lot to process even in the prologue. Names, ranks in the military, titles of leaders – all will be thrown at you in the prologue, but don’t fret if it’s a little confusing. You’ll have more time with all the titles and ranks as the story progresses. (more…)