Dragon Noir Review (Rule Three)

Title: Dragon Noir
Author: Daniel Moylan
Date Purchased: 11/28/2018
Price Paid: $2.99
Date Finished: 7/25/2021
Rating: 0/5

It’s no secret to my regular readers that I struggle to walk away from a book. There’s something about sticking it out to the end that is in my nature. But when you’ve got 171 books to get through? You need to make some hard choices. If a book doesn’t grab me, or there are issues with it? I have to be able to walk away. And when the author is a friend? That makes it about twenty times harder to throw in the towel.

And yet, here I am invoking Rule Three on a book written by a friend of mine. What brought us to this point? Let’s take a quick look.

Before anything else I want to talk about the things I really enjoyed. First of all the way that Quinn’s magic works is pretty inspired. When you read enough fantasy you tend to find yourself bumping into variations on a theme. It’s not always the same theme, but it’s one you’ve encountered before. But this one felt different in the small amount of time that I spent with the book.

Secondly, the otherworldly patron that gives a warlock their powers? Fantastic. I don’t know if I’ve read anything like this in the past. Sure, a lot of books deal with power coming from a benefactor with negative deals being struck left and right. But this one feels different. There’s a chess match aspect to their bartering that seems to breathe something different into the story.

Unfortunately, there were some things I couldn’t see past and my enjoyment was soured as a result.

I wasn’t crazy about the choice to use the detective noir styling for the characters. To be more specific, leaning into the old “this dame walked in and I knew she was trouble” cliches just wasn’t sitting well with me. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with my personal attempt to do what I can to move away from the use and support of those old tropes.

Beyond that, it felt like there was an editing pass that was missed here. Parts of the writing were pretty spot on, and then other parts felt like I was reading a rough draft. I felt like there was a good story that I wanted to read here, but I struggled greatly with the parts that missed an edit.

Final Thoughts: A good deal of promise here, and hopefully an edited version appears.