Noor Al-Shanti's Reviews > Grounded: A Dragon's Tale

I haven't read a book this good in a while.

Grounded: A Dragon's Tale follows the adventures of a young dragon as she comes to terms with a debilitating injury in her wings, deals with the loss of her beloved groombug, and ventures outside her clan, uncovering a smuggling network that threatens her entire planet.

This is a novel filled with adventure, thoughtfully developed relationships, mysteries and, of course, dragons. The author does an awesome job of portraying the unique society of the dragons and revealing the details of this society and how it works seamlessly throughout the novel. She also does something that is rare to find in fantasy novels. Even as fantasy authors obsess over the most random details of their world-building, they often don't pay much attention to ecology, but Gloria Piper manages to not just pay attention to it, but feature it centrally in her world-building so that it makes the planet and its ecosystem feel very real. The high school science teacher in me was just as excited by the world-building in this story as the fantasy and dragon-lover :)

The story doesn't restrict itself to the point of view of the lead dragon, we get to hear from many others including groombugs, Watchers(humans on a scientific survey of the planet) and occasionally the not so wholesome collectors threatening the world. The problems and struggles of one of the humans also weave nicely in with the story of the dragons.

I could probably go on for ages, but I won't. I think it's enough to say that this is a top notch fantasy and science fiction tale. Skilfully written with flawless world-building and well-developed characters and a great story keeping it all together. It can hold up against the greats in both fantasy and science fiction. In fact, it's better than quite a few of those, in my opinion.

A must-read for fantasy lovers, sci-fi lovers, and, especially, dragon lovers. I rarely give a book five stars, but I think this one deserves it!