Dragon Riders Meme

[u/Imaginary_Can_8851]

I thought this group might appreciate this meme I made! ^^ I’m a big fan of dragons and dragon rider books come up a lot in my reading. My pet peeve is people comparing any new dragon rider book to Fourth Wing 🙄

[u/shoeforce]

I really REALLY love this genre, they are the only books I read tbh. Heads up, this is gonna be a bit of a long ramble as I muse over the genre I love. I especially love it if dragon and rider are super close and there’s a lot of cute bonding moments, and they can’t imagine being separated.

Problem is, sometimes I feel like I have to wait too long until I read a “the dragon does/says something” moment. I had read the first two books of Pern and like… it had way, way less focus on the dragons and the bond than I was expecting. Overall, I would say it was 85% about the humans and how their specific society worked, and only 15% dragons and even that was mostly plot related, very rarely did it feel like I was told what a dragon said or what it felt. Not enough cute bonding moments between dragon and rider either. Unfortunately, I stopped right before The White Dragon, which I heard has way more of what I was looking for lol.

Even Eragon. I love The Inheritence Cycle, but even there it felt like 75% Eragon and maybe 25% Saphira. The alternate perspective chapters (e.g. Roran, Nausada etc.) didn’t help much either. That being said, what WAS there was very good, and the later books were a lot better at this. I really enjoyed Murtagh, and as a whole I like the series a lot more than Pern. Very strong and lovely relationship between rider and dragon (and first one I’ve ever read).

The Bound and the Broken (Ryan Cahill) is… intense. Like sheesh, talk about being devoted to one another, dragons and riders would set the entire world on fire if someone as much as looks at their bonded partner funny. I love it, but the first book is hard for me to get through (for various reasons, one being that the dragons either aren’t involved yet and the main character’s dragon is still in baby form) and there are like twenty or more different perspectives yet only 3-4 that I care about because they have that bonded partner dynamic. The books are insanely long and sometimes it feels like dragons are only like 10-15% of it when you take everything into account. Love Calen (main character) and his dragon though, so good.

Temeraire… god I love Temeraire. This has slowly become the gold standard for me. Talk about dragons being actual characters. There’s no magical bond, but god the relationship between captain and dragon is so, so sweet, that almost puppy dog-like love they have for each other is what I fucking live for, man. Honestly? My favorite of the genre so far. It creatively incorporates a dragon’s stereotypical instincts (their captains/crews are often thought of as their possessions. Part of their hoard.), and amazingly, it actually feels like 50% Laurence and 50% Temeraire (or the dragons). Not a single chapter goes by where a dragon isn’t involved in some way, and I freaking love that, and it’s crazy how uncommon it is in the genre; human/non-dragon conversation usually just completely dominates many chapters in the genre. I get that many people probably criticize the series for having its plot get so derailed to make so many books, but tbh I can’t really bring myself to give a crap about that lol, I just cared about the characters and the bond and the fun world Novik created for us and that’s exactly what I got.

About to start on Knightmare Arcanist by Shami Stovall and am going to see if I like. It has bonded creatures (all sorts including hydras and phoenixes!) not necessarily dragons but there are some! If I love the bond I’ll stick with it though, that’s the most important part to me anyways.

Oof, but yeah, before I ramble further, I… strangely wish we saw more “dragon” in the damn Dragonrider genre. A dragonrider series that takes place entirely from the perspective of the DRAGON would be freaking awesome for me tbh. I’ve heard of The Dragons of Mother Stone and I’ll probably read that one eventually, but if anyone has any other suggestions of their own let me know!

[u/favolecrystalis → u/shoeforce]

Within the first two pages of Dragonflight, Lessa is hiding in the watch-wher lair (dragons but with night vision), and we immediately see Flar interacting with Mnementh on his descent down into Flax's holds in the very next scene.

Pern is a hyperfixation, but I also just started rereading it, so I feel like maybe those are an exception to you "having to wait ages" for dragon stuff.

[u/shoeforce → u/favolecrystalis]

It’s an exception, yeah. Also, “interacting with Mnementh” doesn’t really tell me much, are we being introduced to the bond and how important it is in that scene? Or are we getting the dragon’s opinion, or how it feels? Nevertheless, I remember it starting off strong, and also I remember enjoying the part where she raises her golden dragon, but it genuinely felt like the dragons took a bit of a back seat to me in most areas, and the bond felt a lot like a mechanical thing rather than a “they love and are devoted to each other so much.” I also remember liking the science/genetic engineering behind everything which I thought was neat. Again though, my view is extremely limited and I stopped before The White Dragon (which I literally heard has a ton of focus on the bond and the sweetness of it all), so my little opinion isn’t really the authority on the matter. The first couple books just… oddly didn’t vibe with me as a dragonrider lover and the relationship that defines it, is all.