Book Review: The Mark of the Dragonfly

The Mark of the Dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publication Date:  March 2014
Source: Netgalley

Piper has never seen the Mark of the Dragonfly until she finds the girl amid the wreckage of a caravan in the Meteor Fields.
   The girl doesn't remember a thing about her life, but the intricate tattoo on her arm is proof that she's from the Dragonfly Territories and that she's protected by the king. Which means a reward for Piper if she can get the girl home.
   The one sure way to the Territories is the 401, a great old beauty of a train. But a ticket costs more coin than Piper could make in a year. And stowing away is a difficult prospect--everyone knows that getting past the peculiar green-eyed boy who stands guard is nearly impossible.
   Life for Piper just turned dangerous. A little bit magical. And very exciting, if she can manage to survive the journey.

I'm just not quite sure how to rate this, or even really review it. I think it's aimed at middle grade readers, but I also think they'd find it a bit boring. It definitely reads "young". There were some interesting concepts here, and I thought at the beginning of the book that it was going to be better than it was.

The meteor showers dropping stuff from other worlds seemed really interesting. And then what we got was a chase with a train ride, a bit of a reveal at the end, and that's about it. I kept waiting for more, but it just wasn't delivered.

The world building could have used a lot more work. And I never really connected very much with the characters. A lot of my disappoint could be that I'm reading at the same time Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance. And this just extremely pales in comparison with the richness of his writing. But at the same time, I think I would have been disappointed in this one regardless.