Review: Lightweight Fantasy from Down Under
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 13, 2012
A simple, fast-reading fantasy, The Dragon Box waters down an interesting concept into a weak soup of Life Lessons. It starts out with some promise, establishing James as an insecure boy struggling with a newly-paraplegic parent, a former sports star whose shoes the boy simply cannot fill, hard as he tries. The game, of course, gives him an opportunity to develop self-confidence as he solves problems and defeats the baddies in his own way. Unfortunately, it does so in Fluffy Bunny Story fashion: tissue-thin characters who are mostly friendly, a kindly wizard who leads the boy to each problem and most solutions, and repeated emphasis on the fact that It's Just A Game and This Cannot Hurt Him. (There's also an unintentionally creepy vibe as James learns that the old man Mack once gave his then-young mother an early prototype of the Dragon Box game, which seems to allow Mack into the player's mind... is this guy some sort of a stalker with an unhealthy interest in the family, or what?) Just in case there's any lingering sense of danger, the story sloshes around silly spells and other edge-blunting bubblewrap on the way to an ending that only James himself doubts will come to pass. If you're looking for an easy, non-threatening book for a younger, sensitive child, this might be what you're looking for, but The Dragon Box certainly isn't what I'd hoped it would be when I downloaded it.