What do you think?
Rate this book
Dragon Blood #0.5
Dragon Rider
When her island home is invaded by enemy soldiers, her family captured, and the town enslaved, Taylina must find a way to fight back and free her people. But their enemies have powerful warships, sorcerers, and dragons. Her simple people are no match. Her only hope is to venture onto the forbidden half of the island and seek the one individual powerful enough to battle their enemies, a dragon known for eating humans rather than helping them.
Find out what happens to Taylina and meet the dragon who thinks he’s a god in Dragon Rider, a prequel to Lindsay’s USA Today bestselling Dragon Blood series.
From anthology Beginnings
Find out what happens to Taylina and meet the dragon who thinks he’s a god in Dragon Rider, a prequel to Lindsay’s USA Today bestselling Dragon Blood series.
From anthology Beginnings
128 pages, ebook
First published February 28, 2017
10 people are currently reading
469 people want to read
About the author
Lindsay Buroker
197 books6,276 followersI'm a full-time indie fantasy and science fiction author. When I'm not writing, I'm ferrying my dogs to hiking trails for adventures.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 2, 2022
No lie, Bhrava Saruth is a DELIGHT. He's just so unrelentingly upbeat and optimistic. All the guy wants is belly rubs and for people to appreciate the magnificence that is Bhrava Saruth. Sure, sure, he might think he's a god and he might spend an appreciable amount of time trying to woo followers to his side, but he's just so genuinely happy while doing so.
This isn't exactly Bhrava Saruth's story, though. This is Taylina's story with a heaping side of that cunning gold dragon. When invaders attack her peaceful island, Taylina sets out to find a way to stop them. She's not a warrior or a leader, but she has plenty of determination and she's smart enough to see that having a wily dragon on their side (despite his claims of being a god) might be exactly what her people need to save themselves. *thumbs up*
-Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal
This isn't exactly Bhrava Saruth's story, though. This is Taylina's story with a heaping side of that cunning gold dragon. When invaders attack her peaceful island, Taylina sets out to find a way to stop them. She's not a warrior or a leader, but she has plenty of determination and she's smart enough to see that having a wily dragon on their side (despite his claims of being a god) might be exactly what her people need to save themselves. *thumbs up*
-Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal
June 20, 2019
Taylina is attempting to gain favor with a dragon to protect her island village from the invading Corfah with the help of her childhood friend Raff who is now a Mage. She is also trying to rescue her simple minded sister Jessa and other village girls and women who are being held captive on the Corfah fleet.
Characterization and plotting are good.
Characterization and plotting are good.
December 7, 2020
So far I haven't read a loser of hers. This was the first book in a collection of hers balled Beginnings. Kindle cheap with first novels in 5 series. This one doesn't seem to have a "Book 2" yet. Boo hoo.
May 10, 2021
I read this as part of the "Beginnings, box set" and it's a fun story. The story of how Brava Saruth came to have followers and temples. Other than the dragon all the characters are new but it's a story from the history of a world we already love.
January 27, 2023
Copied from my 1/2018 review on the author's series-starters boxed set, Beginnings: five heroic fantasy adventure novels, since I just noticed that there's an independent listing for this title added since then:
... Right now, I just plan to read the "new" (2017) Bhrava Saruth 41K-word Dragon Blood prequel (call it a long novella or short novel), Dragon Rider,which is exclusive to this set, and not currently Goodreads-listed separately.
=================
Dragon Rider [...] occupies just 10% of the set, since the others are good-sized novels.
It's a lot of fun, with dragon fighting dragon, some interesting uses of magic, and a likable, admirable, but realistically imperfect human lead, bemused by the cheerful and completely immodest self-proclaimed "dragon god". Taylina's brotherly friend and colleague Raff is likable, too, though a bit miffed when Bhrava Saruth chooses magicless, lame woodworker Taylina, with her clever (or "crazy") ideas, and determination to act, over his own magical gifts, even if he is just a toolmaker, not a powerful sorcerer. Yes, that's marginally a spoiler, but it was pretty clear where the story was heading.
The story doesn't take place quite as early in Bhrava Saruth's life as I'd expected — he already knows that he loves pastries and belly-rubs, for example, so we don't get to see those "firsts" (I'm speculating that they involved a child, and a furry form), just his first choosing of a "high priestess" and new ambition to gather worshippers.
I'm not going to say much about the action-plot specifics, which revolve around the first Cofah invasion of Iskandoth (later called Iskandia) as experienced on Taylina & Raff's home island, including a daring rescue undertaken against all odds. An ill-tempered local dragon is also involved, as well as the arrogant Cofah dragon/rider teams.
I had only one major complaint: there's a lot of telepathic speech in the story, and it's all left in plain text, not even italicized! You wouldn't expect regular quotation marks, which would make it look like normal (vocal) speech, but I personally prefer when an author uses italics AND some kind of alternate quotation marks, such as « or :: or something, to avoid confusion in pages full of back-and-forth dialogue. The editing was otherwise good, but that one irritation would be enough to knock off a half star, if I were rating it on its own. (I'm not going to put any rating for the whole set until I've read the whole set!) I haven't checked how soulblade Jaxi's mental communication in BotBE is handled, but I hope it's better. I think LB's books usually use simple italics.
**********
1/2023 Query: Has the telepathy-formatting been fixed? Let me know, and I canstrikeout that whole section — I'm reluctant to fully erase it (and lose my wording) until I see for myself.
... Right now, I just plan to read the "new" (2017) Bhrava Saruth 41K-word Dragon Blood prequel (call it a long novella or short novel), Dragon Rider,
=================
Dragon Rider [...] occupies just 10% of the set, since the others are good-sized novels.
It's a lot of fun, with dragon fighting dragon, some interesting uses of magic, and a likable, admirable, but realistically imperfect human lead, bemused by the cheerful and completely immodest self-proclaimed "dragon god". Taylina's brotherly friend and colleague Raff is likable, too, though a bit miffed when Bhrava Saruth chooses magicless, lame woodworker Taylina, with her clever (or "crazy") ideas, and determination to act, over his own magical gifts, even if he is just a toolmaker, not a powerful sorcerer. Yes, that's marginally a spoiler, but it was pretty clear where the story was heading.
The story doesn't take place quite as early in Bhrava Saruth's life as I'd expected — he already knows that he loves pastries and belly-rubs, for example, so we don't get to see those "firsts" (I'm speculating that they involved a child, and a furry form), just his first choosing of a "high priestess" and new ambition to gather worshippers.
I'm not going to say much about the action-plot specifics, which revolve around the first Cofah invasion of Iskandoth (later called Iskandia) as experienced on Taylina & Raff's home island, including a daring rescue undertaken against all odds. An ill-tempered local dragon is also involved, as well as the arrogant Cofah dragon/rider teams.
I had only one major complaint: there's a lot of telepathic speech in the story, and it's all left in plain text, not even italicized! You wouldn't expect regular quotation marks, which would make it look like normal (vocal) speech, but I personally prefer when an author uses italics AND some kind of alternate quotation marks, such as « or :: or something, to avoid confusion in pages full of back-and-forth dialogue. The editing was otherwise good, but that one irritation would be enough to knock off a half star, if I were rating it on its own. (I'm not going to put any rating for the whole set until I've read the whole set!) I haven't checked how soulblade Jaxi's mental communication in BotBE is handled, but I hope it's better. I think LB's books usually use simple italics.
**********
1/2023 Query: Has the telepathy-formatting been fixed? Let me know, and I can
April 12, 2025
This story helps to understand some more about dragons and the people contained in the Dragon Blood series. While it does not directly relate to the rest of the series, it helps to understand the background of the events in that series.
January 19, 2022
No fue mi favorito, me deja muchas incógnitas.
January 30, 2023
Okay now I’ve really finished all of the stories in this series and it’s so bittersweet. I’m so sad it’s over but god was it good! I don’t often reread books but I just might with this series.
February 20, 2023
Prequel to dragon fantasy, focusing on one particular golden dragon with pretensions of being a god.
April 19, 2025
Enjoyable story. Dragon's personality was absolutely wonderful - very unique. Glad he got his own story.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews