Highfire by Eoin Colfer

This book took me a lifetime to read. It was snowing when I took this photo and when I finished it, it wasn't. 🤣
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I don't tend to read books over prolonged periods of time, so taking almost two months to read Highfire by Eoin Colfer is unusual. I've been putting off writing about this book because I don't like writing negative reviews.
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Things I liked: Eoin Colfer's writing has the same delightful whimsical quality in adult fiction as it had in the Artemis Fowl series. I love weird books, and like...who decides to write a book about an irreverent, vodka guzzling, Flashdance loving dragon living in the Louisiana bayou? Who does that?! Props to Eoin Colfer for living his truth.
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Things I didn't like: This was billed as an adult novel but because the MC is a young boy, it ultimately felt like a YA novel but with more cursing. Reading this book was like being invited into a boy's club. I felt acutely aware of the overwhelming "bro"ishness of this book. The representation of women in this book is abhorrent. There is ONE female character in this book, and her only role is as a mother/the focus of an obsessive sociopath.
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I really wanted to love this book, but it fell flat for me. The themes about humanity, companionship, monsters, and success didn't land as I'd hoped, and my discomfort throughout kept me from really losing myself in this world. Having this experience with Colfer's writing makes me want to reread the Artemis Fowl books to see if I was just overlooking these issues in his writing because of young I was when I first read it.