Dragons in a Bag (Dragons in a Bag #1) by Zetta Elliott
Expected Release: October 23rd 2018
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Random House
Source: NetGalley
Dragons in a Bag Synopsis:
When Jaxon is sent to spend the day with a mean old lady his mother calls Ma, he finds out she’s not his grandmother–but she is a witch! She needs his help delivering baby dragons to a magical world where they’ll be safe. There are two rules when it comes to the dragons: don’t let them out of the bag, and don’t feed them anything sweet. Before he knows it, Jax and his friends Vikram and Kavita have broken both rules! Will Jax get the baby dragons delivered safe and sound? Or will they be lost in Brooklyn forever?
Review:
A BIG Thank You to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for providing me a copy of “Dragons in a Bag″ by Zetta Elliott in exchange for my review. “Dragons in a Bag” was a nice, interesting book and I feel a good start to the series.
Let’s start with the characterization. It’s really hard to dislike any of the characters as all of them are charming in their own manner. My favorite characters in the story are Ma and Trub. What I surprisingly enjoyed was that the characters and the settings are still vague after completing the book. Usually, the first book sets the ground for the world building and clearly outlines the rules. When you pick out the second one in the series, you can predict what is going to happen. However, after finishing this book, I am still not completely clear as to where the plot is going or what the characters might do. Ambrose, Trub, Ma and Sis still remain a mystery to me.
That doesn’t mean that the story is boring. It’s a wonderful concept and draws you in as soon as you start reading. The author has written the characters in a compelling manner that makes you want to pick up the next book and continue. Actually, I was expecting a lot of interactions between Jaxon and the dragons. Instead, I liked that the story focused more on the relationships between Jaxon and his new friends. On a side note, as an Indian, I chucked when I read Jaxon’s reaction to pedas (it is a delicious Indian sweet!)
Coming to the negatives, there were some minor glitches that bothered me while reading the story. While I enjoyed the time travel element, I found some parts of the story a bit unrealistic. For instance, when Jaxon goes into the dinosaur era, he swats some mosquitoes during that time. Wouldn’t this alter the future, in some way? I’m not going to get technical on the metaphysics of time travel, but it was hard to believe that things remained exactly the same when Jaxon came back to the present time. However, considering that it is a middle grade fantasy, I didn’t take this matter too seriously.
Also, I wish there were some proper names for the characters to easily distinguish them. I really liked the characters being referred to as ‘Ma’ and ‘Mama’ and thought it was a cute concept. However, since many sentences had Jaxon relating between his Ma and Mama, at times I read one as the other, causing some confusion.
The story leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and I can’t wait for the sequel to read more! Perhaps there is a logical explanation to these inconsistencies mentioned above and provided in the next book. I enjoyed Zetta Elliott’s style of writing and how she made her characters feel down to Earth. Geneva B. has also drawn some nice illustrations that I feel would look even better in the final draft. Overall, “Dragons in a Bag” is a fun adventure start to the series and I rate it 3.5 / 5 stars.
