Review: Thunder Kraken by David Estes & Dyrk Ashton

Blurb:

Zee Tarrow’s dreams are finally coming true.

While the road to acceptance into Triumf’s Citadel Academy has been filled with pain, suffering, and more joy and surprises than Zee could’ve possibly imagined, now is his time to shine. After all, he’s the first kraken rider in more than a thousand years! Who could possibly defeat him? Except now he must be separated from his best and most loyal friend, the kraken, Jessup, as they both must complete basic training individually in order to pass and become full-fledged cadets.

Easy, right?

Not so much. Rival flights will stop at nothing to defeat or even destroy them, but Zee and Jessup will face far graver danger from mysterious powers who despise them simply for existing. Assassination attempts, monsters of the deep, and the challenges of rising from the sea to live in a world that prefers dry land will thwart them at every turn.

All the while, an evil deadlier than the most powerful dragonrider to ever exist lurks in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to come forth and destroy…

If Zee and Jessup are to survive much less thrive, they must forge new friendships, overcome the odds stacked against them, and, above all else, continue to progress their power to levels that haven’t been witnessed in a millennium.

Review:

So… after reading the first Kraken Rider novel, I went and devoured one of David Estes' series, and it was good, really really good (ignore the fact that I read Kingfall instead of Fatemarked). And I also got to meet Dyrk, and various Dyrk clones while at WorldCon. If you haven’t read Kraken Rider Z, go read that first before reading this review (or go read the first review for some context). I thought I had lost my notes for this novel, but then I found that rectangle of paper and the book came back to me.

If I had to sell this to another young adult who is in high school or recently just finished, I’d try to sell them with these two sentences. One a statement, and one a question:

“Zee and Jessup continue training their powers to fight that mysterious foe from the first novel. Will they survive their training or will sabotage kill them?”,

all while staring at them with a page or two left to read out, because those two sentences say practically everything and nothing. 

Without further ado… let's get into the characters, Zee and Jessup. From the last book onwards they grow even further, mastering new magic and growing in character. Don’t think I need to add more to that, since they just pick off where they stopped in Kraken Rider Z, and they end the novel with the set up for the next one. It works, entertaining to see a merman and a kraken absolutely run over everyone else.

Now where things get interesting is the plot. If you thought this was a high school YA novel, you’d only be partially correct. The parts that are not high school YA angst… that’s where things get fun. Shenanigans are aplenty, murder plots exist, and dragons get tossed around by squid Thor. And then the novel ends with a set up for the next Kraken Rider Z adventure. I like how Ashton and Estes string their novel together, as well as the mention of Jessup in the first Kingfall novel, it makes it seem as if there is going to be a set up to a more multiverse style setting in ten years or so.

As for world building… more lore of the merfolk are dropped, as well as some more about the blood sorcery voodoo shenanigans. I don’t really know how else I would explain the world building without massively spoilering the first book, so to generically sum up Zees world with as little context as possible, I present to you this:

“Oceans, islands and dragons. Dragons have an academy. There’s also an armada, merfolk are used as slaves and there're terrifying sea monsters seeing about those tasty morsels diving in the water to clean ships (talking about the merfolk). The Merfolk are chained with iron. Normally only dragons and humans can bond, but somehow a kraken and merman do so too - pandemonium ensues because natural law has been broken. All while the dragon weirdos are freaking out, there’s a bunch of non dragon weirdos who practice blood magic and worship a undead dragon flying sorcerer. Meanwhile, the regular humans who go about their day to day life are just trying to exist while the dragons and the blood magic people are duking it out.” 

I think that sums up the world building for now. Anything else and book one will not be a mystery any more. Except that Zee and Jessup survive until book two somehow. Somehow. (this is a hint for you to go read book one). 

Now, the only critique I have for this novel is that it underperforms book one. Book one is this grandiose thing that sets up a penultimate battle setting up a high standard for a kid who is in what amounts to a high school with dragons. Sure, I have a feeling things will start to ramp up to the intensity of Kraken Rider Z, but it was still… somewhat annoying to finish a book as if the novel had reached a summit, and there was only up left from there only to have a dragons claw launch us back to square 1.5. In the end, everyone will have their own view of it, so I’d recommend trying “The Thunder Kraken” out for yourself.

If you’ve gotten this into this review, thank you for reading what is now my 75th post here on the site, and I hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next read. If not, don’t fret… we have a lot of reviews up here on the site, and there’s some awesome ones for novels I’ve enjoyed reading, so here’s a random link to one of those reviews. I dare ye to click it and have an adventure seeing what else we have to offer.

Wherever you are reading this, stay safe, have fun, and a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!