Tom Mock

The Dragon Thief | Molten Flux
I wanted to read more of a thief fantasy today that really took off after a much less engaging prologue. A second opening, though it introduced some interesting story ideas, didn’t quite keep my interest.
(from Captured In Words)

139. Blake & Raven Penn, The Dragon Thief

I would have more to say about chapter 1 of this story and about what I understand about the world of the opening hadn’t been bogged down by a much less compelling prologue.

The two are night and day in terms of style. Ch1 grounds the reader immediately in the action of the scene and the perspective of its MC, while also gradually highlighting interesting magical world details.

In the prologue, however, characters are briefly described, but not introduced. We learn precious little about them and what they’re doing before the scene focuses on a series of magical visions which are a but too disorienting.

This is the kind of prologues that gives fantasy prologues a bad name, I’m sorry to say. It would have made me close this book, at least. But I wanted to read just enough to feel like I could evaluate this opening, and that introduced me to the story proper.

I’m glad I continued. The 1st person story is engaging, well written, has a great balance of dialogue and narration and a terrific sense of stakes and pacing.

It’s clearly written, gives the reader an immediate sense of the kind of story their reading, and presents us with a likeable, active MC. It’s a page turner to be sure!

Sometimes you just have to give a book a chance. I had to wait until this one properly started. There’s a lesson there. But chapter 1 is off to a great start, so I’m in.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/107769711-dragon-thief

140. Jonathan Weiss, Molten Flux

A desert caravan is attacked in a world where water has become a resource for magic and is no longer needed for human survival.

The prose of this opening chapter was accessible and descriptive of the immediate action. Our hero tries to work out how he’s going to get free, but he needs to do it NOW.

This urgency isn’t felt by the reader, tho. Our 3rd person close pov just insists on it. I wish this opening had taken less time to tell me what characters were physically doing, or imagining they would do, and had spent more time on the context for the scene.

We whisk past a detail that our raiders are going to eventually kill everyone to turn them into some kind of zombies with some kind of liquid. It’s easily the most interesting part of this chapter, but is given next to no attention.

Water can be used to make magical ink, and that takes a little more president here to good effect, especially for fantasy fans who love different magic systems. And our hero uses a glyph on his arm to get free.

There’s action here, to the openings credit, but the end of the chapter was the end of my interest. Our hero climbs up out of the canyon to a sudden, unlooked for wall of a sandstorm that isn’t anticipated by anything in the text.

Whoosh, the sandstorm hits with a rapidity that makes the end of the chapter feel creatively stunted – as if the curtain drops as soon as our narrative doesn’t know quite where to go next.

I liked the ideas brewing in this opening very much, but it would have been more interesting for me if the narrative engaged with them more, as well as introducing our MC, rather than leaning on violence to try to make the story go. It was almost enough, too! But I pass.

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