Highfire
Eoin Colfer
I read Highfire four years ago. I know that because I emailed a friend about it on 2-Feb-2019. I had read (listened to, actually) and mostly enjoyed most of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books, and it was that that prompted me to pick up Highfire. The first thing to say about Highfire is that it is very different in tone and overall feel from Artemis Fowl. It is not a Children's or Young Adult book -- indeed, it is tagged as "adult" on Goodreads. The publisher's blurb is unusually detailed, so I needn't say much about the plot and characters.
Here is what I wrote my friend about Highfire four years ago
I recently read a new novel by Eoin Colfer: Highfire. I liked it a lot. It's about a dragon named Vern who lives in the Louisiana Bayou and a teenage kid who calls himself Squib. This all sounds like the typical setup for a young adult novel, but actually, it feels very different. It's a gritty and dark book, with a truly evil villain. (It actually reminds me a little of the Percy Jackson books, which I always thought were like a gritty ghetto version of Harry Potter.) It felt very adult, even with the fantasy/YA plot elements. That got me started on Colfer again (I never did read all the books in the Fowl series), but I hope he writes more like Highfire.
As far as I know, he did not, alas.