Steve Review: The Dragon’s Tooth by ND Wilson
Title: The Dragon’s Tooth
Series: Ashtown Burials #1
Hardcover, 496 pages
Author: ND Wilson
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Publication Date: August 23, 2011
Source: Book Expo America
Buy: Amazon
Add To: Goodreads
Book Summary from Goodreads.com:
For two years, Cyrus and Antigone Smith have run a sagging roadside motel with their older brother, Daniel. Nothing ever seems to happen. Then a strange old man with bone tattoos arrives, demanding a specific room.
Less than 24 hours later, the old man is dead. The motel has burned, and Daniel is missing. And Cyrus and Antigone are kneeling in a crowded hall, swearing an oath to an order of explorers who have long served as caretakers of the world’s secrets, keepers of powerful relics from lost civilizations, and jailers to unkillable criminals who have terrorized the world for millennia.
Steve Review:
I really enjoyed TDT. I enjoyed it in spite of myself, if you want me to be quite honest. Let’s start with the bad that led to the eventual greater good. I hate this cover. Everything about it makes me not want to read the book. I may be a bit superficial about covers, but I’m honest about it and if a cover looks like junk I often times don’t give a book the chance it deserves. But I ran out of books to read on our trip moving out here to NV so I didn’t have much of a choice.
In spite of that cover, I found myself slowly being drawn deeper and deeper into the TDT world. Mythical orders, dark villains, and a brother sister duo that pulls it all together. TDT is great fantasy that while aimed at a younger audience can be enjoyed by nearly any age. Go try it out, ignore the cover, and enjoy the gripping tale as we get ready for what should be a very entertaining series!
Points Scale:
Cover: 1/5 – Just awful. I almost didn’t read the book because of this.
Title: 3/5 – Improvement over the cover.
Plot: 9/10 – Loved.
Characters: 8/10 – Bro and sis against the world.
Writing: 8/10 – Draws you in without the normal boring uber detailed background typical of a 1st book in a series.
Ending: 8/10 – Sure, let’s start a new series!
Total: 37/50 – Just a decent cover would move this book into the elite category. Such a shame. DON’T JUDGE THIS BOOK BASED ON ITS COVER 
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Twitter: inconceivably
Totally agree…the cover is TERRIBLE! What were they thinking?
Not saying I loved it, but what about the cover made you hate it so much?
Twitter: LStrongin
It’s really surprising Random House would produce such a terrible cover. But I guess this was one of those “Don’t judge a book…” moments, eh?
Sounds like a cute read. Though I will say the blurb reminded me very strongly of the opening chapters of Treasure Island.
Smiles!
Lori
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Twitter: SteveDayOD
@Allison: I have no idea!
@Heather: Can I say EVERYTHING? lol. I would prefer not to rant and just say it doesn’t agree with me but since you asked …. If you come in not knowing ANYTHING about the book (like most people do when they pick up a book and look at the cover for the first time) I dislike a lot of the elements. I’m more of a blue background kind of guy, not orange. Why is there a little snake coiled around this boy’s arm? Why is the illustration not very high quality? Why aren’t his eyes actually looking at that arrowhead (lol) he is holding? If I’m over 10 years old the cover looks like it belongs to a much younger audience. And if I’m over 7 the cover doesn’t look “cool” enough to read. It just feels like barely any time went into the cover design and I think that this book definitely deserves better. It’s like the kind of abstract young illustrations that are on the HP covers but much much worse.
@Lori: I can see that. It was definitely a good read
Twitter: booksandwine
I totally don’t love this cover either, but I like that what is inside surpasses the cover!!
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