Dragonswood

Dragonswood
Janet Lee Carey
403 pages
Publisher: Dial
Source: library
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Tess grew up in a medieval place where men beat their women and dominated over them.  She hates that world and wants nothing more to escape.  She gets her chance when she's accused of witchcraft and is saved during her drowning test by a dragon.  Soon she is on the run with her two best friends, on the adventure of a lifetime.

If you know me, you know I don't generally enjoy fantasy novels but I had to give this one a try because the cover just drew me in.  I mean look at that, it's just gorgeous.  Thankfully, it wasn't just a gorgeous cover; it was a fantastic plot that drew me in from page one.  I read the Prologue the other night right before my husband and I were about to go out, I was actually whining that I wanted to keep reading - I knew it was going to be a fantastic novel.

The world building Carey does in this novel is fantastic.  Even though I generally wouldn't want to travel to the year 1192 (I love indoor plumbing much too much to ever leave it) I would love to visit the world Tess lives in.  To have a magical forest in practically my backyard and to be able to see fey and dragons there would be just amazing.

Speaking of dragons, I think they were my favorite part of the whole novel.  They were really personified dragons and I loved their human emotions and attributes.  I'm sure if this were real life instead of a novel, you would be able to see their emotions in their eyes.  They were so huge, but also very tender.  I can't recall ever reading a novel with dragons before, but if there are more out there with dragons like this I would gladly give it a go again.

Four stars!  I really loved this novel from page one, but by the last seventy or so pages I was ready to move on.  It's a great standalone novel and fantasy lovers of any age are sure to love it even more than I did.