Lightningborn Series: Storm Dragons #1 Published by Disney Publishing Worldwide on April 1, 2024
Genres: Juvenile Fiction / Action & Adventure / General, Juvenile Fiction / Animals / General, Juvenile Fiction / Fantasy & Magic, Juvenile Fiction / Readers / Chapter Books
Pages: 336
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Goodreads
In a world in the clouds where only the rich own dragons, a poor boy named Remy finds a wild baby dragon-believed to be extinct-and becomes the focus of an evil pirate's vengeance.
REMY spends his days trying to survive the mean streets of Cutthroat Wedge-one of the many islands floating in the gravitational pull of the magical Maelstrom raging below. But his life changes forever when a violent storm brings a baby dragon to his doorstep, and he feels a bond he has never felt with anyone. Remy names the dragon Storm and vows to protect this new friend, no matter the cost.
GEM longs for the day when she call herself a true mage. That is, if she can convince her teachers and peers that just because she's a princess doesn't mean she's lazy and spoiled. But when Gem learns that the floating islands that make up her kingdom are rapidly sinking into the Maelstrom, she makes it her mission to save her world. Against the king's wishes, she accesses forbidden research and discovers the secret to saving humanity may lie in a True Dragon-a dragon capable of intelligent thought and able to cast and use magic. But True Dragons are extinct . . . aren't they?
Remy's and Gem's lives will never be the same when their fates collide, thanks to Storm. With an evil pirate mage named Jhaeros determined to claim the rare dragon for himself, the two must learn to trust in each other as they team up with a shifty pirate captain and her crew, stand together against impossible odds, and embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
Review:
Lightningborn is the first in a series of books by Julie Kagawa called Storm Dragons. The series title tells you that storms and the magic surrounding these kinds of dragons are involved. Our tale is told from alternating points of view between a princess and an orphaned boy. The two views will collide, and eventually, they will have the same goal: save the island before they crash into a monster and rescue the baby dragon from a power-hungry pirate. What I like most about this story is that Julie Kagawa knows how to write dragons, whether in a young adult fantasy or a younger middle-grade series. She lays out the world’s magic in easy-to-understand language; the simple world-building is intriguing and leaves room for exploration in the future book of the series. I don’t know how many books are in this new series, but I am eager to see what other kind of storm dragons we get to meet.
About Julie Kagawa
Julie Kagawa, the New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Fey and Blood of Eden series was born in Sacramento, California. But nothing exciting really happened to her there. So, at the age of nine she and her family moved to Hawaii, which she soon discovered was inhabited by large carnivorous insects, colonies of house geckos, and frequent hurricanes. She spent much of her time in the ocean, when she wasn’t getting chased out of it by reef sharks, jellyfish, and the odd eel.
When not swimming for her life, Julie immersed herself in books, often to the chagrin of her schoolteachers, who would find she hid novels behind her Math textbooks during class. Her love of reading led her to pen some very dark and gruesome stories, complete with colored illustrations, to shock her hapless teachers. The gory tales faded with time (okay, at least the illustrations did), but the passion for writing remained, long after she graduated and was supposed to get a
real job.
To pay the rent, Julie worked in different bookstores over the years, but discovered the managers frowned upon her reading the books she was supposed to be shelving. So she turned to her other passion: training animals. She worked as a professional dog trainer for several years, dodging Chihuahua bites and overly enthusiastic Labradors, until her first book sold and she stopped training to write full time.
Julie now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where the frequency of shark attacks are at an all time low. She lives with her husband, an obnoxious cat, an Australian Shepherd who is too smart for his own good, and a hyper-active Papillion.
I loved the YA books I read by Julie Kagawa. Even got to meet her years ago at BEA in NYC. Glad to hear this one was good!