Die Drachengreif-Chroniken: Federsang by Michael Peinkofer and Pascal Nöldner
(There's no english version of this book as far as I know)
Synopsis:
"Seit Anbeginn der Zeit sind die Königreiche Drakania und Gryphoria miteinander verfeindet. Ihre Bewohner hassen einander, ohne sich je getroffen zu haben, und auch ihre Reittiere, die Drachen und Greife, sind Erzfeinde.
Alix, Prinzessin von Drakania, träumt davon, mit ihrem geliebten Drachen Feuerherz in die Reihen der Drachenkrieger aufgenommen zu werden. Schöne Kleider und rauschende Feste bei Hof lassen sie kalt. Als sie zur Strafe für ihr ungehorsames Verhalten zu ihrer langweiligen Tante geschickt werden soll, um endlich zu lernen, wie eine echte Prinzessin aufzutreten hat, reißt sie aus …
Luk ist der Sohn eines einfachen Sattlers, und lebt auf Burg Greifenwacht im Reich Gryphoria. Als Stallbursche darf er sich um die edlen Greife der Ritter kümmern – und seine beste Freundin ist die Greifin Federsang. Als sie vom Sohn des Fürsten misshandelt wird, weiß Luk nur eine Lösung: Sie müssen weg aus Greifenwacht …
Ein spannendes Fantasyabenteuer über Freundschaft, Mut und den eigenen Platz im Leben."
My thoughts:
Okay, I can't mince my words with this: this book was bad. It was so full of racism and sexism that I'm in total disbelief on how it made it past the editors. Then again, I never heard of the publishing company before, so maybe that's why.
The racism in this book actually made me put it down for a moment. Alix, the female main character, is of "drakanian" (speak, some kind of asian) heritage. And her sisters names are Qing and Ping. I shit you not. Qing. And Ping. That's some Joan level of idiocy I didn't expect to read. Qing and Ping are also, of course, shallow and stupid (according to Alix) because they like "girl stuff" like dresses and parties. They giggle at their younger sisters misfortune and do not get to say even one word in the whole book.
(Also, the authors both put in zero research for anything, because they didn't get any of the obviously chinese stuff right. Alix gets a dress sown, she wears a tunic and trousers in several scenes and somehow she's allowed to just walk and run around all alone, which would be weird even if she wasn't literal royalty. Her dragon, Feuerherz (Fireheart), is also of the european variant.)
The book wants you to think only good things about the female lead and that she can do no wrong. Alix is brash and cool and not like others girls! She wants to be a warrior! She is a princess who doesn't want to do the duties of a princess! Living in comfort is nice, though, especially when she gets a free dragon out of it. It doesn't matter that Alix is hotheaded and makes stupid decisions, it's her father who is bad and evil for wanting to take her dragon away. She's also smart! Not that it's ever really shown because that would require good writing.
The Male Lead, Luk, is utterly boring. He is nice and caring and also special, because, unlike literally all the other male characters, he has emotions and cries! Like, all the time. He's also stupid, according to the narrator, even though it's him that knows how to heal the broken wing of a dragon while Alix just stands there, not knowing what to do. But remember, she's the smart one!
Genuinely, what the fuck.
This book is for children aged 10 and up but tbh I wouldn't allow my (imaginary) child to read this book on their own. It's just stupid and so full of racism and sexism that idk what to make of it. It feels a bit like those horrible teen movies from the 00s - only that this book was published in 2024 and not 2004. It reads like the authors thought about how this would look like as a badly animated TV show and not how it makes sense in a book.
On top of it all it wasn't even written well. Or funny. Or interesting. It was just plain bad. The story made little to no sense with both characters just being assholes. All of a sudden, at around the halfway point of the book, there is a prophecy, some legendary guy living in the woods waiting for children to come by (hello???) and some kind of guy up north who may or may not be dead or evil. Who knows.
Alix steals a dragon, which. Okay, not good, but it's her dragon and she's a princess. She'll be the only one to bear the consequences (until later, when she steals the dragon again and nearly starts a war over it).
Luk steals a gryphon - the Gryphon of the count he serves. Right after his dad told him that the count might be nice now but that he could very well just... kill them if he wanted to. Luk steals the Gryphon anyways, for his father and older brother who stay behind to bear the consequences.
Great guy.
The legendary guy living alone in the forest is supposed to be all wise and mysterious, but he's just annoying an mean imo. He tells a young boy, maybe 12, to his face that he thinks he has no brain and that his father is equally stupid, even though the boy hadn't done anything bad to him. Or said more than one sentence to him. He was so mean to Enver and I could only think how cruel it was to say that to a child. Yes, Enver wasn't the nicest character up to this point (he was a major antagonist of the first third of the book), but to the legendary guy that shouldn't matter because he doesn't know that.
I didn't even mention the "funny" mascot character yet and I don't think I will, actually. Golly was so utterly useless in the story that I really have no idea why he was there. And with a dragon and a gryphon around I'm not sure why we also needed a talking fox.
The best thing about the book was the art. The cover looks great imo (it was 90% of the reason I bought the book). It has vibrant colours, Federsang (Feathersong) looks very cute and both her and Luk look cute. There's also art inside of the book, with the same artstyle as the cover, but it's black and white. Which is fine, most childrens books don't have coloured pages as it would be too expensive and the books too heavy for a child to hold.
I strongly recommend not buying this book. It's not worth it.
I bought this book on December 30th, 2024 and finished reading it on January 3rd 2025.
I adore dexterity games. There is something very satisfying about gracefully placing a piece just right and the deliciously terrible tension that builds as you see the first teeter of a misplaced block. Haba’s dexterity game, Wobble King, is a
