Book Review: The Secret of the Dragon by Geronimo Stilton (The Thirteen Swords #1)

  Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Le Tredici Spade #1: Il segreto del drago

This is one of these books I was planning on getting to eventually, but not for a few more years as I already have a very long TBR shelf. Then Dad got me the fourth book in this series as Christmas, and now I'm pretty much obligated to read books 1-3 so I can get to this book and not seem ungrateful for the gift. Ah well. Spoilers ahead.

Four people from different species, Ondine the Sea Nymph; Dran the Titan; Aldar the Dreamer; and Lune the Mountain Elf, are chosen to be the saviors of their realm. The young wizards are each given a magical sword, part of a set of thirteen swords. The four heroes have to work together to find the remaining swords in time before the descendants of dark wizards can obtain them and overthrow the good wizards.

A book that isn't too bad, but boy, it's too painfully generic for its own good. It legit left no meaningful impact on me whatsoever. I care nothing for these characters, the world is very standard as far as fantasy goes, the quest is very basic, it just all feels very predictable and does nothing to stand out.

Particularly the character struck me as especially bland this time around. Legit they have so little to go for in terms of personality and backstory that they're just very uninteresting and indistinguishable aside from maybe one or two tiny traits that set them apart. The only character who really has an arc is Ondine, and even her arc is just the basic "believe in yourself and face your fears" stuff we've already seen a thousand times.

Honestly the only characters I thought were kinda interesting were the two villains, two twins who are descendants of a dark wizard and now seek to fulfill their ancestor's mission. Their banter was mildly entertaining and at least these characters were more interesting and distinct than our leads.

I do think that the moral the book teaches is decent, but again it's a moral we've seen many times before and it doesn't really do anything unique with it.

I didn't hate this book or anything, but I'll be forgetting about it very soon.

Rating: 3/5