Ava Richardson

Dragon Trials by Ava Richardson is the first in the Return of the Darkening series. The story follows Seb and Thea, who have been chosen by the red dragon Kalax as her riders. In this world, young dragons go out into the city to choose their riders, of which there are always two- a navigator and a protector. Seb and Thea are from quite opposite social status. Seb is a commoner, among the poorest, while Thea is from a noble and long established dragonrider family. As the two learn to work show more together and with Kalax, a darkness has been creeping over the land. Soon the time for training will be over. Question is- are they going to be ready?

Seb and Thea both change during training. Seb, especially , undergoes a powerful transformation as he discovers his own inner strength and conviction. The themes of friendship, loyalty, trust and bravery are explored throughout. There are places where the writing faltered a bit, but overall, Dragon Trials is a delightful dragon story that will dazzle readers of all ages. It is a book that captures the awe and wonder of youthful innocence, and the power of the human spirit to conquer fear and adversity. Recommended, especially for dragon fans.

***Purchased and read for my own enjoyment. show less

Nova and Zephyr are ordinary teenagers living in foster care. At least, they thought they were ordinary until a giant lizard starts talking to them and insisting they come with him to another world. When he claims to know something about Nova's mother, the girls go with him. This other world is filled with magic. Nova begins training to be a dragon rider while Zephyr is drawn to witchcraft and studies spellcasting. It is illegal to learn both.

The girls befriend hatchling dragons and unknown show more family members. They also run into bullies and evil beings from other worlds. But they always have each other, no matter what trouble or dangers they face. But can they survive by themselves or will they need to begin trusting others to stand by them?

I loved this story. It was filled with action, yet slowed down enough to build a world that I hope to visit many more times. This is also the first book I've read by Ava Richardson and it left me wondering why I waited for so long!

I received a free ARC from BookSprout and have reviewed it willingly. show less

This was a very fun dragon fantasy novel! The characters drew me in right away and the setting was interesting – a high mountain monastery! Niell is charming in his insecurities and his bumbling ways. He’s trying very hard to do the right thing but the trick is figuring out what the right thing is – obey his father’s commands or stay true to his new found friends. Tough place for the lad to be in too, being a bastard son of a War Lord.

Char I really liked right away. She’s also show more bastard born and a bit of an outcast in the male-dominated world of dragon tending. She’s a little older than Niell and has been at the monastery for about a year (if I recall correctly) so she already knows some of the pitfalls that Niell will blindly stumble into. Her new room mate Sigrid is a first year as well. Char also has a wondrous and dangerous secret – a young dragon named Paxala! She rocks!

The plot has a good balance of action, character building, magic system building, politics, and bad guys needing a pounding. My one little quibble is with Niell. As much as I like him, he did come off a little angsty or whiny here and there. He’s rather touchy, feeling out of place, and even small ribs from his friends have him questioning his place at this dragon monastery.

Not all is well in the Three Kingdoms just as all is not well at the dragon monastery. There’s a chief dragon, who is supposedly the father of all the dragons. He’s a heavy handed ass, but a very dangerous one. Honestly, how would you go about putting this bully in his place? Well, that’s a good question that Niell and his friends might have to face. The monastery has a range of characters. Some are bull-headed sexist men, some hate everyone equally, some are sympathetic but don’t feel they can change it all over night, and some have hidden agendas and are quite dangerous.

All around, this is a great addition to the dragon fantasy genre. 5/5 stars.

The Narration: Tiffany Williams gave a very good performance for this novel. She had perfect voices for both Niell and Char. The rest of her character voices were each distinct and well done. Her male characters sound masculine. She did great with the dragon voices as well, including their whistles and scree! cries. 5/5 stars.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Ava Richardson. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it. show less

What an exciting follow-up to the series! There was still some of the same issue from the first book where exposition was not very creatively inserted and was spelled out blatantly. That wasn't a big deal though, as the rest of the story and creativity made up for it.

Early on there's an actual fortune telling scene predicting the future. It was a dry scene in itself with a lot of classroom instruction, but it was fun to try to predict the plot from it, and to align moments in the story with show more the predictions from earlier. I think I got pretty much all of the predictions wrong, though. 🤣

There were some new kinds of magic that cropped up in this book now that the initial world and characters are established. As usual, that's TOTALLY what I'm here for and I loved the creativity in the rules and mysteries in their lore. Some of the delivery of it was a bit uncreative, with teachers literally just lecturing to students (and by proxy, me the reader), but whatever -- use the medium I guess, right?

For those who were hoping for a little more of the actual dragons in the title, you'll get it! Right from page one, in fact! There's a lot more natural integration of the dragons as characters now that Yanna has settled in a bit and we can learn more about them. Unsurprisingly, their world is defined largely by the presence of dragons, and we start to see more of them interacting with it.

I'm so excited about the direction the story is going! I'll definitely be reading the next (final?) book in this series! Side note: it's super hard to write about sequels without ruining so much of the first book...

Thanks to NetGalley for a free copy. This is my honest review!  show less