I read 10 pages on 24th, and as of 9:30am I'm now on about 120. Amazing book! I love this series! Very hard to put down :) ( )

a step up from the first book. a step into a larger world, as Obi-Wan said ( )

As always with this series of books a very enjoyable read.
Icefire introduces the villan Aunt to the story and takes a far more interesting turn to the world of dragons than the first book
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I enjoyed this book even more than the first one. It delves more deeply into the actual dragonlore and has much highers stakes than Book One, which revolved around the comings and goings of squirrels. Because of that, I also found the portrayal of our main character to be more believable, as he has better reason to be invested in the plot; I didn't completely believe it when he seemed to make his whole life revolve around a couple of neighborhood squirrels before.

The one thing that I really didn't like about this book was the bias that David felt against Zanna, a goth girl who goes to school with him. He seemed very repulsed by her goth-ness at first. Though he does start to get over it the longer he gets to know her, it just seemed to be much stronger than it needed to be, and as someone who personally really likes that style, it irked me. I was also mildly concerned about a scene at the end of the book where she shows up dressed in non-gothic clothing. She's getting ready to embark on an arctic expedition, so I'm hoping it's just a realistic portrayal of the fact that nobody really keeps up that style 24/7 and that she's just wearing practical expedition clothes, but I do fear that the author is trying to portray her gothness as a phase that she grew out of for the preferences of the main character, which I think would be really crappy.

I was also a little annoyed with the way that the concept of relationships were handled in this story. David's girlfriend, Sophie, goes away on an 8-month trip for her work, and while she's gone David ends up developing feelings for Zanna. In the end, it goes so far as he willingly kisses her; then his girlfriend appears and magically has an unrealistically amazing three-year job offer in Kenya, leading her to conveniently break up with him and let him pursue Zanna at will. It irked me that he actively chose to cheat and was effectively rewarded by his situation magically simplifying itself and him getting no negative repercussions whatsoever. Also, no one around him seemed at all bothered by the idea that he might be pursuing another girl while he was taken. ( )