my big gripe with the story is that it feels like a series of notes, or like you're watching a movie and it's just characters standing in a room while the narrator tells you what *would* be happening if it was a movie. there's a big rule of "show don't tell" in fiction and it's usually to avoid situations like this, it feels very "heavy" on the mind to just read chapter after chapter of expository paragraphs about a bunch of background information especially when it doesn't mean anything to us yet. we were introduced to a family of dragons, their names, histories, size, powers, relationship dynamics etc then they just got thrown away because "no this new guy is the mc". we got introduced to a void in space with these realm trees, spread out across the sky and glowing, a big empty space as the location for the novel, then it got deleted because "no actually were going over here to this heaven place instead". then we had to go through the whole process of exposition dumps for the people who mattered again, it feels like a burger wrapped in 4 layers of packaging, inside a sealed bag, placed in a locked chest, hidden in a wardrobe. even if it's our favourite thing ever the price is too high. you have to study and study chapters and chapters of homework just to get into this novel and I genuinely had to put my tablet down a few times to give myself time to relax from it all.
