Also by this author: The Promise, The Drummer Boy, Sinner, Green, The Dream Traveler's Quest, Into the Book of Light, The Curse of Shadownman, The Garden and the Serpent, The Final Judgment, Millie Maven and the Bronze Medallion, Nine, Millie Maven and the Golden Vial, Millie Maven and the White Sword, Millie Maven, And They Found Dragons, The Blue Boy and the Red Princess, The Light of the One, The Dragon Rider Who Saved the World, The Unknown Path
Series: The Dragons Among Us #5
Published by Scripturo on October 1, 2022
Genres: Children's, Fiction, Fantasy
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Held captive by the Alchemist tribe controlled by dragons, Noah finds his long lost sister, who is now an alchemist and worshiper of dragons. He must save her or die trying. But she has no interest in being saved. Worse still, the ruthless enemies of the Alchemists, known as Scalers, seek to destroy Noah and the tribe of Alchemists who have taken him captive. Noah’s only hope now is to find the Silver Dragons who once helped his father, Jack, overcome the darkness.
Daughter of the Alchemist picks up where right where Son of the Light Bringer left off. I like the contrast implicit in the books’ titles. Noah Solomon is the son of Jack Solomon, the light-bringer who defeated the dragons twenty-five years ago. Serenity is the daughter of the Alchemist king, the head of a small faction that serves the dragons and is plotting the fall of Jack’s colony—but Serenity is also Esther, a girl kidnapped by the Alchemist as a baby…the long thought dead daughter of Jack Solomon.
Noah’s pursuit is quickly waylaid when he’s captured by Scaler guards. However, rescue comes in the form of a great Silver dragon—the same dragon named Zevonus that led his dad into the light a quarter-century before. After their rescue, they are dropped off right back into Scaler territory to meet the Scaler king and confront him for his capture of Serenity. It doesn’t render the section of the book nonsensical, but a bit non-sequitur and only there to introduce Noah and the reader to the Silvers while keeping their actual help for later in the story.
A lot of this story feel manufactured. Like, the story beats that happen do so not because they feel the most natural but because they are necessary to position all the pieces into the right places for the book’s climax. The Dekkers want us and Noah to be introduced to the Silvers before the end of the book when they play a more important part, so they get crammed into a scene where they rescue them right before putting them back where they found them. That meeting allows Noah the knowledge to defeat a dragon in an arena matchup (what’s a middle-grade/young adult fantasy without a gladiator-style fight, right?), but it doesn’t feel natural to the story. Same with Serenity’s kidnapping by the Scalers—all that does is to pit the Alchemists against the Scalers and potentially provoke Zion to war. All of this feels father fast, jumbled, and more complicated than it ought to have been.
In the end, though, Daughter of the Alchemist is serviceable enough in broadening the context of the book and setting the stakes for the final showdown in Children of Zion. It’s enjoyable, if a bit befuddling, and serves more as the center of a single story rather than something that stands by itself.
P.S. – One practical thing of note is that while this series has a different name from its predecessor, it retains a sequential numbering from it. So while Daughter of the Alchemist is the second The Dragons Among Us book, the spine and all data regarding this book list it as Book 5. The trilogy as a whole is listed as Books 4-6.