The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter (The Burning #1) – Book Review

Howdy, howdy, my name is John and this video 
is a review of the book The Rage of Dragons  
by Evan Winter. This book has gotten a lot 
of hype on BookTube. When I decided to start  
reading some more modern fantasy, I knew that this 
was one of the books that I would need to read.  
So is this book worth the hype? In short, the 
answer is no. I understand why people love this  
novel. Winters has a very engaging writing 
style. He writes action scenes very well.  
Winters is a good storyteller. I can very easily 
see a premium cable company giving this book  
a 10 episode series and people really enjoying it. 
I personally didn’t find Tau, the main character,  
to be likable, but I still sympathize with him. 
My problem with this novel comes down to the world  
building. Winter made some interesting decisions 
when he developed this world; however, in my  
opinion, I don’t think he thought those decisions 
through well enough to create a believable world.  
Because I did not find the world to be believable, 
I really struggled with the ending of this novel  
as well. To me, the ending of this novel is just 
a mess. Again, it would make for great television.  

It makes for a great reading as long as you’re 
not analyzing it too carefully, but it really  
it wasn’t a good ending in my opinion. I really 
struggled to come up with a rating for this novel.  
As I mentioned, it’s very readable as long as 
you’re willing to kind of go along with the flow.  
The pages turn really quickly. My problem is 
I don’t know how to weigh that against what  
I think is kind of subpar world building. I 
finally decided to give this novel four stars.  
I do anticipate that Winter will 
become a better world builder  
as he writes more novels. I have no intention of 
reading any more in this series until it becomes  
a completed series. When the last book comes out 
I may pick, … uh pick it back up again and read  
through the series to see how he progresses. There 
is a glossary of terms in the back of the novel,  
and if you decide to read it, I do suggest 
making frequent use of that glossary. I know  
that I had to, because Winter does use some unusual 
words to describe kind of commonplace items. So  
once you kind of adjust to that you won’t 
need glossary as much but it’s there for  
a reason. Thank you for watching this video 
and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

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