It's been quite some time since I visited the mythical land of Dirt with author C C Hogan. The first time I read a Dirt book, I was immediately taken with the characters and their interactions with the dragons. I mean, who doesn't like a good dragon, right? I'd been meaning to get back and read some more of this wonderful series, but you know how it is, life has a habit of getting in the way of all your best intentions.
Girls of Dirt is Book One of Series Two of the Dirt Saga and picks up a full 500 years on from where the last book I read finished. Of course, Dragons live to well over a thousand years old, so there were plenty of recognisable Dragon characters from the previous story. This particular iteration of the tale involves two young girls, Silvi Farthing and Ferret. Well, I say young, but although Silvi is just seventeen, turning eighteen, Ferret, on the other hand, is an ancient and although she looks in her early twenties she is actually over five hundred years old.
For those unfamiliar with the Dirt saga, a long time ago, dragons and humans lived happily together as friends and equals. Dragons would help humans and vice-versa, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Just as a new, "democratic" style of government was beginning to emerge, after some horrific wars, a terrible disease had ravaged the dragon population and the few survivors had flown far away across the world to where no humans and no disease existed. Dragons slowly, over time, became nothing more than folklore to the humans and by the time of Girls of Dirt, nobody believed they existed anymore.
In the five hundred years, Dirt had regressed and become like a Medieval European Feudal world, with cruel Kings, Barons, and Warlords ruling with an iron fist and keeping the populace scared and poor.
Two dragons, Be-Elin and Mab-Abin are determined to try to return Dirt to the world dreamed of by their original riders, Pree and Johnson Farthing, a world where dragons and people could again live side by side in trust and dignity and a world where people governed themselves and were not ruled by monarchs or despots. They choose Silvi and Ferret to be the instruments of change, along with them and so the adventure begins.
I Do enjoy the world that Hogan has created in the dirt series. He has managed to imbue his dragons with real emotions, real feelings and wicked senses of humour. I also am a big fan of the values he tries to pass on through his stories; friendship, love, tolerance and the dignity of humanity and dragons.
The Dirt stories are always good, rollicking adventures, with a ton of action and a twisting, turning plotline. The only negative I had from this particular book was that frequently the changes in perspective in the story were not always clearly delineated. There was more than one occasion when I thought I was still reading about Silvi and Be-Alin when in fact the perspective had changed to Ferret and Mab-Abin. It didn't detract from the story too much and I loved the read. It is a good, solid, suitable length for an epic-fantasy and leads perfectly on to Book two in Series two of Dirt.
This is a wonderful series and I can highly recommend it to fantasy and especially dragon lovers everywhere. Hogan will make you look at dragons in a whole new light. Read the series from Series one, book one, if you can, because it definitely does follow a specific timeline.
A great read and it won't be as long, I'm sure before I venture into another Hogan, Dirt classic.
Girls of Dirt is Book One of Series Two of the Dirt Saga and picks up a full 500 years on from where the last book I read finished. Of course, Dragons live to well over a thousand years old, so there were plenty of recognisable Dragon characters from the previous story. This particular iteration of the tale involves two young girls, Silvi Farthing and Ferret. Well, I say young, but although Silvi is just seventeen, turning eighteen, Ferret, on the other hand, is an ancient and although she looks in her early twenties she is actually over five hundred years old.
For those unfamiliar with the Dirt saga, a long time ago, dragons and humans lived happily together as friends and equals. Dragons would help humans and vice-versa, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Just as a new, "democratic" style of government was beginning to emerge, after some horrific wars, a terrible disease had ravaged the dragon population and the few survivors had flown far away across the world to where no humans and no disease existed. Dragons slowly, over time, became nothing more than folklore to the humans and by the time of Girls of Dirt, nobody believed they existed anymore.
In the five hundred years, Dirt had regressed and become like a Medieval European Feudal world, with cruel Kings, Barons, and Warlords ruling with an iron fist and keeping the populace scared and poor.
Two dragons, Be-Elin and Mab-Abin are determined to try to return Dirt to the world dreamed of by their original riders, Pree and Johnson Farthing, a world where dragons and people could again live side by side in trust and dignity and a world where people governed themselves and were not ruled by monarchs or despots. They choose Silvi and Ferret to be the instruments of change, along with them and so the adventure begins.
I Do enjoy the world that Hogan has created in the dirt series. He has managed to imbue his dragons with real emotions, real feelings and wicked senses of humour. I also am a big fan of the values he tries to pass on through his stories; friendship, love, tolerance and the dignity of humanity and dragons.
The Dirt stories are always good, rollicking adventures, with a ton of action and a twisting, turning plotline. The only negative I had from this particular book was that frequently the changes in perspective in the story were not always clearly delineated. There was more than one occasion when I thought I was still reading about Silvi and Be-Alin when in fact the perspective had changed to Ferret and Mab-Abin. It didn't detract from the story too much and I loved the read. It is a good, solid, suitable length for an epic-fantasy and leads perfectly on to Book two in Series two of Dirt.
This is a wonderful series and I can highly recommend it to fantasy and especially dragon lovers everywhere. Hogan will make you look at dragons in a whole new light. Read the series from Series one, book one, if you can, because it definitely does follow a specific timeline.
A great read and it won't be as long, I'm sure before I venture into another Hogan, Dirt classic.
Do pop on over to Amazon and check out this amazing series from C. C. Hogan. I assure you, you won't be disappointed
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