🐉LATINX DRAGONS🐉
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I grew up dreaming of unicorns and dragons. They were hands down my two favorite magical creatures, and though I never found books in Spanish about them when I was growing up in Puerto Rico, I was lucky to discover The Enchanted Forest Chronicles in my local volunteer-run library, Bucapla. It quickly became one of my favorite sets of books, and I still own copies at age 31.
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And they *are* good books. But how sad is it that they were my only option?
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All this to say that Amparo gave me something I never even dared hope for. A book (possibly a series? 😉) that not only described the most amazingly complex dragons I've ever read about, but was driven by a team of athletes who looked and sounded and dreamed like me.
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I know I am just rambling over here and not giving a proper review, but I feel so seen I could cry. I loved The Enchanted Forest Chronicles as a kid and I still do. But Blazewrath Games has cemented itself as my new favorite dragon book not just because it's a great story, but because it's one brimming with love for the island that I have spent the majority of my life in.
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Please pre-order this book, because all things aside it has:
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🏆 A Very Competitive Dangerous Sport
🏆 Dragons With Extremely Cool Abilities
🏆 Epic Battle Scenes
🏆 Blurry Morals/Ethics
🏆 Loving Friendships
🏆 Deep Patrotism
🏆 Magical Law & Order (!!!!!!!!!)
🏆 Latinx & Queer Rep
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¡Gracias, Amparo! No sabes el regalo que le has dado a mi pequeño corazón. Te quiero mucho. Is that weird? Ese es el poder de tus palabras.

I think pitching a book as quidditch meets how to train your dragon is gutsy and sets the bar pretty high. And the potential was there. I was really interested in this idea of a game designed around dragons that was known about in the "normal" world. I really, really wanted to love this book as it has all sorts of things that I like. Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lack of clarity around world building and the beginning of the book happening incredibly quickly with a lot of info-dumping, little character building, and an overt amount of pop-culture references. I feel like had more time been spent on world building in the beginning, and the pacing in the beginning of the book had been a little slower or more focused, this book would have been stronger. If you are newer to YA fantasy and are not as focused on strong world building, you will probably really like this book.