Eona by Alison Goodman

Title: Eona
Author: Alison Goodman
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Release Date: April 19th, 2011
Pages: 637 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

Once she was Eon, a girl disguised as a boy, risking her life for the chance to become a Dragoneye apprentice.Now she is Eona, the Mirror Dragoneye, her country's savior--but she has an even more dangerous secret.

She cannot control her power.

Each time she tries to bond with her Mirror Dragon,she becomes a conduit for the ten spirit dragons whose Dragoneyes were murdered by Lord Ido. Their anguish floods through her, twisting her ability into a force that destroys the land and its people.

And another force of destruction is on her trail.

Along with Ryko and Lady Dela, Eona is on the run from High Lord Sethon's army. Sethon has declared himself Emperor. In order to stop him,the renegades must find Kygo, the young Peal Emperor, who needs Eona's power if he is to wrest back his throne.

Eona, with its pulse-pounding drama, thrilling fight scenes, sizzling tension--and many surprises--brings to a close an epic story.

Review:

High Lord Sethon has declared himself Emperor after a coup, though the true Pearl Emperor Kygo has escaped. Eona, her identity as a woman revealed, Lady Dela, and islander rebel Ryko have also escaped and must find Kygo. He'll need Eona's power to take back his throne, but Eona can't control her power. Every time she tries to connect with her dragon, the ten dragons of the murdered Dragoneyes attack her. In need of training if Sethon is to be defeated, Eona and the resistance are forced to rescue Lord Ido, the murderous Rat Dragoneye and a power-hungry man. Torn in a million different directions by truth, power, loyalty, and more, Eona will have to make decisions that could save the empire or bring it to ruins.

Finding the words to describe this book is difficult, so I apologize if I ever seem muddled or nonsensical.

The mythos of the world Eona takes place in was carefully constructed and laid out in Eon--the twelve dragons and their relationships to the Dragoneyes, the purpose of the Imperial Pearl, and what the Dragoneyes can do with their power. In Eona, almost everything the reader knew is turned upside-down because nothing was what it seemed to be in the first book. All these reversals, especially in the relationships between the dragons and their Dragoneyes, make perfect sense in their execution and make the stakes even higher.

It takes a good while for the story to get to its climax, but intense battles are throughout and don't make it feel like there's a long wait. In the meantime, Eona and the other characters get some development. Some of the decisions Eona made in the book and the sheer amount of lying/secret-keeping she does boggled my poor mind. Seeing what could have been if Eona had a moral compass like Lord Ido's basically nonexistent one is very easy and she does some seriously bad things without thinking much on it. Considering her situation, where she's come from, and the problems she could cause herself by dwelling on it, I'm tenuously okay with that.

Romance takes a huge step up in this book, and it almost feels too sudden, like it's happening just because Eona is now known to be a woman. Eona's relationships with Kygo and Lord Ido are both refreshingly, wonderfully complex; while one is based on romantic feelings and troubled by trust issues, the other is mainly driven by attraction and power and is nowhere near healthy. For the first time in more than a few months, reading about love/lust-driven relationships sent a thrill through my system. I didn't even mind that there was a love triangle! I wish I could have seen more of Lady Dela and Ryko's relationship, though the latter put some serious effort into pushing Lady Dela away.

This book had me so enraptured that I had my head in it for four out of six classes for three days straight, unable to put it away because Eona and her sometimes-slow, sometimes-rapidly-paced story wouldn't let me. (Don't worry about any neglected schoolwork; my grades will be fine.) I was so mentally exhausted in the very best way upon finishing the book that I put my head on my desk and sat like that for twenty minutes. For about an hour after that, I was all smiley and floating. I know you don't want to hear about any of that, but I'm detailing it for a reason: I've never a reaction like this to any book in my life. Sobbing like a baby? Yes. This? No.

A day later, everything about this book is still bouncing around in my head, from the characters to the decisions Eona made that weren't always very ethical and were never easy. I felt that the preceding book Eon had its flaws, but Eona more than made up for them. There's no doubt I'll be coming back to this book (and maybe a few specific scenes) for a reread at a later time and enjoy the severe mental exhaustion all over again. This is a must for any fantasy or dragon fans looking for something new.

5 stars!

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Eon by Alison Goodman

Title: Eon
Author: Alison Goodman
Publisher: Firebird
Release Date: August 31st, 2010
Pages: 532 pages (trade paperback)
How I Got the Book: Christmas gift.

She has a powerful secret... with deadly consequences.

For years, Eon's life has been focused on magical study and sword-work, with one goal: that he be chosen as a Dragoneye, an apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of Good fortune.

But Eon has a dangerous secret. He is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been masquerading as a twelve-year-old boy. Females are forbidden to use Dragon Magic; the penalty is death.

When Eona's secret threatens to come to light, she and her allies are plunged into grave danger and a struggle for the Imperial throne. Eona must find the strength and inner power to battle those who want to take her magic... and her life.

Review:

After years of training, it is time for Eon to take the final test to see if the Rat Dragon chooses him as the new apprentice. Many hopes are riding on his success: Those of his master Brannon, who has used up much of his fortune sponsoring Eon and Eon's own hopes of escaping poverty for good and never having to worry about going back. All he has to do is be chosen and keep his greatest secret: he is truly a girl named Eona. When the day comes, she is chosen not by the Rat Dragon, but by the Mirror Dragon, the dragon that has been lost for five hundred years. Thrust into the workings of the court and forced to be a pawn in the battle for the Imperial throne, Eona must keep her gender secret to keep her life and fight against the machinations of Lord Ido, who has something terrible planned for the empire.

After some reviewers I trust pointed this book out to me through advertising its sequel Eona, I knew I had to read it. A beautiful cover, a good premise (which, when combined, usually does not bode well for a book anymore), lots of good reviews for it... How could I resist? A week of reading later, I'm begging for April to get here faster so I can read the sequel and learn the answers to all my burning questions.

Some novels jump right in at the start and others stumble. Eon? It had a really bad stumble due to a hole in the premise. Short version: dragons only take apprentices born in their year (Rat Dragon takes person born in the Year of the Rat). Eona is born in the year of the Mirror Dragon, but poses as being born in the Year of the Rat. People can be fooled, but not the dragons, who realize that she is a girl and know her real name, so they know her true age too. Everyone should have been smart enough to know it would not work. This was all a badly done set-up so that Eona would have a reason for being taught as a candidate and the mess shows through clearly. Oh, and I don't believe it is a good idea to start thinking about what people see when they look at you when you're in the middle of a battle in which your teacher is fighting dirty to try and injure you! You can do that after you've had your butt kicked, not before.

After we got past the first hundred pages where most of the bumps were, the novel really hit its stride as we settled into the court intrigue. The structure of the court and the traditions of it rang true, even if they were difficult to put together in my head sometimes. The prose is rather plain, but it is acceptable in this book. Certain elements of the story such as the Contraires (they said they had a male and female soul, but it kept getting implied the rest of the book that it was a woman's spirit in a man's body) were unclear to be, but were much clearer than they would have been in Goodman went for the fancy prose.

Lady Dela's story of being a Contraire and how she has suffered for it was, in my opinion, the most interesting part of the book, even if little time was spent on it. This is the first time I've seen a transgender person in any book and Lady Dela made a wonderful representation. The feminist element to this book, about how hard it is to live as a woman in such a patriarchal society, rang true in both Eona's struggles and Lady Dela's. The power of women had a huge part to play in this book and I'm looking forward to seeing the developments in the sequel.

And no romance at all! This will put certain readers (read: many girls my age) off a book, but not me. I prefer books to be romance-free, but I often pick up ones with romance in them anyways because it's near-impossible to escape and I won't let something like that keep me from reading a book that sounds interesting. Want a break from the lovey-dovey for a story that concentrates on the plot? Eon is something you should think about trying. There are the barest hints of a set-up for future romance, but some may pick up on them and some won't. They are so small that they may end up amounting to nothing at all.

The characterization left a lot to be desired. Eona felt like just a tool of the plot instead of a true character. If you asked me to describe her personality, I would not be able to come up with an answer. She is being thrown around by the plot in order to advance itself instead of her advancing the plot herself, and this is not something books should do. I asked multiple times in this book, "What was their motivation?" I wanted to see why Lord Ido was the way he was. Don't need a sob story, just some decent background info. The only people who felt halfway real were Lady Dela, our novel's transgender/crossdressing supporting character, and her bodyguard Ryko. Those two were the characters I cared about.

I really did like this book by the end of it and would have given it a better rating, but such a huge hole in the premise doesn't go unpunished in the rating. The sequel Eona comes out in April 2011 and I am so getting it. If you're looking for a descriptive, enjoyable novel that isn't afraid to take its time, this might be the book for you. Eon left off on a huge cliffhanger and I refuse to just leave it hanging and never know what happens.

3 stars!

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