The Chronicles of Kale: A Dragon's Awakening

In Knight's debut novel, young Kale Firehart is the last of the dragons, and the vengeful General Jedah is hell-bent on destroying him and his species forever. In order to escape the general's grasp, Kale's friend Thomas transforms him into a human, which exposes him to a world of unexpected troubles. Unable to morph back into a dragon, Kale must embark on a journey fraught with obstacles (and romance) to discover what it really means to be a dragon. Despite an intriguing premise, Knight's mediocre prose and weak metaphors ("an emotional stone hit him in the chest") leave the book feeling deflated and unoriginal. There is an action-packed story behind the latticework of second-rate plot devices, but it simply isn't worth a reader's time to try to discover it. (May)