Review: Dragonwatch, by Brandon Mull

With Dragonwatch, Brandon Mull takes a rather safe, conservative approach to fantasy. There's never really a sense of danger or terror, not much of a sense of adventure. That's because in Mull's fantasy world characters largely remain within magical safe havens that protect them from demons and dragons and ogres. Perhaps this is nothing new for readers of Mull's Fablehaven series, which I have not read, and if you haven't read it, there are plenty of spoilers in Dragonwatch. What you will find in Dragonwatch is a mildly amusing fantasy adventure.

Seth and Kendra are hot off their Fablehaven adventures when we first see them. Seth is finishing a quest for some witches, testing his new abilities as a shadow charmer (something that doesn't see much use in this book, actually). Kendra is back home, relaxing and exercising. She is now Fairy Kind, an ability that gets some use. Now that the demons have been defeated, things feel safe, but both Seth and Kendra receive some warnings about the dragons, who are enemies of the demons. With the demons defeated, the dragons stand ready to fill the vacuum left behind. As it turns out, with their newfound abilities, Seth and Kendra will have a major role to play in protecting the world against the dragons.

As exciting as that sounds, you won't find a whole lot of excitement in Book One until the end, and even there it's sort of rushed through and drained of suspense. Some of the plotting is amusing and holds promise, but the characters are all paper-thin dull. Seth and Kendra serve as the two perspective characters. The narrator alternates between them at will and sometimes even seems to forget about them. Both have personalities that could be explained in one word. Seth is reckless and Kendra is cautious. Not a whole lot of complexity, and it's made easier by having the characters fall into society's expectations of gender roles. And like other YA heroines, Kendra swoons at the sight of cute boys, including the unicorn Bracken and then later another boy, which bothers her because she thinks she loves Bracken. Seth has no romantic interest, but he's at the age where boys apparently think girls are gross. Parents can rest assured that Mull plays it safe with the young girl and boy, but this means they do lack the sort of depth that might make them more intriguing characters.

Plenty of fantasy appears to revel in combining the real world with the fantasy world, from Neil Gaiman's work to Harry Potter to The Spiderwick Chronicles. This is probably most comparable to Spiderwick, but in that series the characters feel real and so does the danger. Where Spiderwick could scare with small goblins and other beasties, Mull's massive dragons are tame by comparison. Never once did Mull have me believe any of these characters were ever in harm's way, even when they did inevitably venture out from their safe havens. Fans of Mull and YA fantasy will probably find enjoyment here, and I didn't find the book without amusement. It's a fast-paced, unchallenging work that will likely have readers curious to know what will happen next.