What do you think?
Rate this book


Hardcover
Published June 1, 2026
Speaking of drafts, Orr's writing process is proof the "cut 10%" rule doesn't apply to everyone. His earliest drafts are more like extended narrative outlines, and his process involves progressively flushing out the story with more details and substance in subsequent revisions. That's certainly the case with DragonForged, although he also made a few notable cuts from the original version to the published version, including what was originally the opening scene, so in total what was cut may have constituted 10% of the work, but with at least an additional 10% added elsewhere. That difference between the opening scenes is probably the biggest change - the events still take place, presumably in much the same way, but they now take place off-page. It might seem strange to put such a pivotal event outside the scope of the written story, but I think it was the right decision. Readers don't need to know exactly what happened in that scene to make sense of the story and the characters, and it saves the story from being bogged down in details of draconic culture and whatever the dragon version of anthropology is (dracothology?), about which we are still left with some extant questions.
Often, I praise how a novel or novella represents a self-contained story, even within a larger series, but that's definitely not the case here. Orr wrote this piece to deliberately provide amplification on the backstory for the world we will encounter in his forthcoming series, and released it as an appetizer for the epic fantasy feast (epic in story scope, not in word count) which will begin publication in December 2026. In that sense, it's almost not its own story at all. There is no traditional plot arc or character arc to follow. It is a kind of light fantasy interpretation and rendering of a creation story (as discussed at greater length in my recommendation post).
The three sibling dragons in the story are, essentially, gods in the context of the upcoming series, bequeathed with massive powers of elements (loosely defined: you won't find these elements listed by Aristotle or the periodic table) which they use somewhat inconsistently throughout the story. Their roles in the world to come require them to be somewhat iconic in nature, unchanging and static in their personalities, but in a novella focusing upon them it makes for sometimes odd structural beats. In my opinion, the novella would also benefit from more time with the brewing antagonist, who is probably the most dynamic and interesting of the three, rather than the main focus on the other two dragons. He's a little more unique and distinctive than his siblings, a little more independent of his story-assigned role.
You can read DragonForged now, even receive it as a free ebook by signing up for Orr's newsletter, but you might appreciate it more if you read it as a companion novella in six months, with the release of the first full book in the series. Alternatively, you could read it now, and read it again when DragonGods comes out in December. Orr's prose and storytelling approach is fast and light, so reading it twice shouldn't be much of an imposition.