How much of your soul do you have to carve out to become a weapon?
That's the question I kept asking myself while listening to The Rage of Dragons. I started this audiobook on a rainy Tuesday shift at the library—strictly during shelving hours, obviously—and I almost dropped a stack of biographies because the tension in this book is palpable.
We talk about "grimdark" a lot in the horror and fantasy circles. Usually, it just means "lots of mud and people being mean." But this? This is different. This is obsession.
When Revenge Eclipses Survival
Think Gladiator, but strip away the glory and replace it with pure, unadulterated self-hatred. Or better yet, compare it to Pierce Brown's Red Rising. Elantris has that same brutal transformation arc, though the magic system does the breaking instead of an arena. You know that feeling in the first Red Rising book where Darrow is just getting beaten down, over and over, until he hardens into something sharp? That is Tau.
Tau isn't the "Chosen One." He isn't special. He's actually kind of trash at fighting when we start. But then tragedy hits—(classic, brutal tragedy, because happiness is illegal in fantasy apparently)—and he decides he's going to train until he breaks reality.
I love a training montage. I really do. But this is sixteen hours of a training montage from hell. It's repetitive, yeah. He fights. He fails. He fights again. But it works. It creates this claustrophobic dread that I usually only get from psychological horror. You're waiting for him to snap.
Shirley (my cat) usually sits on my lap while I listen. During the second half of this book, she moved to the other end of the couch. The vibes were that rancid. In a good way.
The Baritone in the Bloodshed
Here's where it gets complicated. The narrator, Prentice Onayemi.
First off—the voice. Wow. It is deep, rich, and incredibly soothing. Like, "read the phone book and I'd listen" levels of soothing. He does the accents beautifully, grounding the African-inspired setting in a way that feels authentic and respectful. It's lyrical. Almost poetic.
But here's the rub.
When you're writing a scene where people are hacking limbs off and dragons are scorching the earth, maybe "soothing" isn't the right gear?
There were moments during the fight scenes—and there are a lot of fight scenes—where the text was screaming chaos, but the audio was whispering bedtime story. It's a disconnect. If you've listened to Steven Pacey read The First Law, you know that when things get gritty, the narrator should sound a little gritty. Onayemi stays clean.
Does it ruin it? No. But it definitely pulled me out of the immersion a few times. I found myself thinking, "Why are you so calm? You're on fire."
Who's This For (And Who Should Run)
If you're tired of the same old Medieval European fantasy setting—knights, castles, ale, blah blah blah—you need this. The Omehi culture is fascinating, the caste system is infuriating (in the way it's supposed to be), and the dragons are actually scary again. Skip it if you need likable protagonists or lighter fare—Tau's single-minded vengeance leaves no room for warmth.
2 AM, Lights Off, Already Searching for Book Two
Just be warned: this isn't a happy book. It's a book about the cost of vengeance. It's exhausting. It's brutal. And despite the narrator being a little too chill about the violence, I couldn't stop listening.
I finished it at 2 AM. My apartment was dark. I was tired. And I immediately went to see if the sequel was available. That says it all, really.
