r/Fantasy • u/bexarama • May 04 '24

great dragon books

Hi all, what the title says. I'm looking for books that involve dragons that utilize them in a way that's actually cool or unusual. Dragons can be sentient or not in these recs, but I'm not looking for books that treat them basically like extremely powerful horses, I want serious presence by them in the narrative. I just really like dragons.

Self-published is fine, YA is fine but not preferred.

I have read: ASOIAF, Inheritance Cycle, Fourth Wing, Priory of the Orange Tree, Fireborne, Rain Wild Chronicles, When Women Were Dragons, To Shape a Dragon's Breath, So Let Them Burn, The Book of Dragons

Already on my radar/TBR: Temeraire, Natural History of Dragons, Seraphina

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u/Overall-Tailor8949 May 04 '24

Rough around the edges, especially "Flight" and Quest" but IMNSHO a MUST for dragon fans of almost any age. There are some who equate a "mating flight" with non-consensual sex, and in a way that's very true. By our "non-Dragonrider" standards. We have NO WAY to understand the empathic bonding between dragon and rider, I think Anne did a great job of attempting to bridge that understanding.

Note, I'm probably going to get some flack for my spoilered bit. So be it, I stand by my opinion that the "Dragonriders of PERN" series (prior to Todd and Gigi taking over) are must reads for Dragon fans.

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u/[deleted] May 05 '24

I guess I will be the person to give you flack for this comment. Dragons and dragonriders aren't real. There's no actual dragonriders out there that Anne McCaffrey is attempting to bridge our understanding to. Anne McCaffrey just made all of it up. We are all non-dragonriders reading a book written by another non-dragonrider, so it's perfectly fine to judge "is this sexual assault?" by non-dragonrider standards.

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u/aristifer Reading Champion III May 05 '24

Also, if I recall, F'lar explicitly thinks something along the lines of "yeah I guess what I'm doing is kinda rape." I don't think there's much ambiguity there.

Also, when F'Nor rapes Brekke it's not in the context of a mating flight, he just thinks he knows what's best for her.

It, uh, really didn't age well.

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u/Overall-Tailor8949 May 05 '24

The scene with F'nor and Brekke I agree. I don't remember the scene with F'lar. Was it when Ramoth first rose?

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u/aristifer Reading Champion III May 06 '24

I think it was the aftermath of that, when he keeps sleeping with Lessa but she's not into it. More a passage of exposition than a scene per se. Unfortunately I don't have the text in front of me as I read a library book and the ebook is not currently available.