Book Review: Dragonswood

TITLE: Dragonswood
AUTHOR: Janet Lee Carey
PUBLISHED: 2012
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: fantasy, adventure
PREMISE: After she is accused of witchcraft, Tess and her two friends flee their village into the mysterious dragonswood.
MY REVIEW: So the first book from 2012 I read this year! This is not a bad way to kick off a new book year either. I will say Tess was a bit underdeveloped (as was her romance with Garth), and it had a bad habit of dragging in the middle. But for a first book? Not bad. I definitely give points for originality.
Dragonswood is straight up fantasy that the author obviously thought out. True I was a bit fuzzy on one or two details but that may have been just me missing out on a detail here and there. I was just so happy to be reading a fantasy book again. Hardly any YA authors do epic fantasy like this anymore. Most of the fantasy in YA is heavily grounded in our world. Which is fine but sometimes I just crave another world you know? I was sort of hoping the success of Graceling would start a revival of sorts but it seems there aren't any takers. I can literally count on both hands the number of epic fantasy in YA that was published last year and two of those books were from the same author (Tamora Pierce, or as I call her the lady responsible for getting me into fantasy in the first place). So I hope maybe Dragonswood will jumpstart a fantasy trend? Pretty please? I love my urban fantasy but I love the magic that comes from going into a world that you know nothing about.
So while this could use a bit of work in the character department, it was still a rather solid fantasy. Not sure if this is going to be a series. Judging from how it ended I don't think so, but you never know.
WHO SHOULD READ: epic fantasy fans, Tamora Pierce fans, faerie fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five