Author Chris D’Lacey brings readers another exciting fantasy/science fiction novel perfect for those that love dragons. The Erth Dragons: The Wearle is the first in what appears to be a series (warning: it ends with a major cliff hanger) about a group of dragons sent to explore and colonize Erth. The dragons, as a group, have a lot of drama going on with courtships, eggs hatching, vying for power and positions as well as some strange things going on with the dragons that work in the mines. All of this leads to a sense of unrest which does not mix well with what is about to happen as humans enter the picture.
The tribe of humans normally avoid the dragons, but Ren, a young member of the tribe is fascinated by them. Ren thinks about them constantly and when the mutual truce/avoidance is threatened he sets off to warn them. This sets the stage for an exciting adventure that will forever change his life.
The Erth Dragons: The Wearle is an exciting book with an imaginative community of dragons and their environment, and it will certainly appeal to readers who are into that kind of thing. However, the fact that all the dragons had names that started with the letter ‘G’ and sounded very similar, as well as the fact that the perspective kept switching around from various dragons and humans made this novel a little difficult to read and keep straight the events and characters.
This book was sent to Compass Book Ratings for review by Scholastic Press (A Scholastic Imprint)
Content Analysis:
Profanity/Language: None
Violence/Gore: Dragons refer to a fight to the death; dragons fight, inflicting injuries on one another (3 times); description of dragon dying in a rock slide (2 times); description of dragon burning arm off human (2 times); secondhand account of humans having ventured into dragons territory and coming back injured; human throws stone at dragon to provoke it; human dies from burn wounds; secondhand account told of another creature that caused injuries and destruction; boy sees dragon try and kill a baby dragon; baby dragon bites boy’s hand; human stabs another human’s hand with a spear; dragons kill another dragon with fire; humans shove and push one another in anger; humans shoot dragon with arrow; human burned by a dragon (2 accounts); human stabs dragon in the eye with an arrow; human kills a horse with a broken leg; human told to sacrifice his own son to the dragons; human binds and drags another at sword point; human threatens to kill another human; description of boy being bound and gagged; human stabs and kills another with a sword (2 sentence description of how he was stabbed clean through given); dragon threatens to take out another dragons heart; dragon threatens to kill a human and squeezes him in his claws; humans are killed by dragons (no description given of how); dragon kills human with fire and then another dragon steps on the human; dragon threatens and roughly handles a human; dragon hurts another dragon by whipping it with its tail; dragons fight and injure one another causing them to fall to their death; dragons burn human settlement.
Sex/Nudity: None
Mature Subject Matter:
Death
Alcohol / Drug Use:
Implied that men get drunk from “juice of the berry” by how they act.
