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looneysoysauce's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
timothyforner's review
5.0
A great fantasy story, especially if you like dragons (who doesn't?!) I loved the names the dragons gave themselves. Perfection! The real charm of this book is the relationship story. It explores what happens AFTER the fairy-tale wedding. The couple has to learn to live together and find common ground between their differences (like a real marriage). Except for them, it's much more challenging because they live under an oppressive ruler, in a time of political strife, with haughty dragons and meddling demons to contend with.
gefnjardottir's review
1.0
I bought this book from the author at a book and magazine festival and it's been sitting with the other books in my to-read pile for ages. I finally decided to give it a go yesterday and here are my impressions.
First let me say that, as a NaNoWriMo participant myself, I understand how a month's time probably isn't enough time to create vivid, three-dimensional characters or an epic plot, especially when it's a first novel. I'm inclined to cut it some slack for that fact alone. However, the simple fact of the matter is that I didn't find it a very compelling read for many reasons.
Firstly, the back cover text seems to play up the fantastical elements, when there's actually more focus on Dionelle's relationship with her husband and their rocky marriage. The problem is not that the book focuses on a relationship between characters, but that it wasn't very engaging. I get that they are a young couple and trying to figure things out, but the change from "happy couple" to "so frustrated they aren't sleeping in the same bed" seems abrupt, and it doesn't help that the writing and dialogue is very uninspired.
In fact, I think this book's biggest problem is that it features some tropes that have just been overdone at this point. Dionelle's conflict with her sister is a classic Madonna/whore conflict, Lady Karth is an evil villain who does evil things. Again, some of this can probably be chalked up to the fact that it was written in a month, but that doesn't mean the tropes aren't outdated or sexist.
I was also a bit weirded out by the dragons' fascination with Dionelle because of her whiteness. Dionelle's skin and hair are both white, the book tells us, and this whiteness makes her beautiful and fascinating to the dragons, who are all the colours of the rainbow. I found it interesting that dragons placed such a high value on very white Western standards of beauty, it's especially jarring because, apart from a brief mention of "foreigners" there are no characters of colour in this book near as I could tell. Heck, even the Dragoness Superior is a literal white dragon with blue accents. Perhaps it doesn't need to be said, but the book is also very heteronormative with the complete erasure of LGBT+ characters.
If what you're looking for is a typical love story with dragons, you could do much better than this book, but TBH, it's really not my cup of tea.
First let me say that, as a NaNoWriMo participant myself, I understand how a month's time probably isn't enough time to create vivid, three-dimensional characters or an epic plot, especially when it's a first novel. I'm inclined to cut it some slack for that fact alone. However, the simple fact of the matter is that I didn't find it a very compelling read for many reasons.
Firstly, the back cover text seems to play up the fantastical elements, when there's actually more focus on Dionelle's relationship with her husband and their rocky marriage. The problem is not that the book focuses on a relationship between characters, but that it wasn't very engaging. I get that they are a young couple and trying to figure things out, but the change from "happy couple" to "so frustrated they aren't sleeping in the same bed" seems abrupt, and it doesn't help that the writing and dialogue is very uninspired.
In fact, I think this book's biggest problem is that it features some tropes that have just been overdone at this point. Dionelle's conflict with her sister is a classic Madonna/whore conflict, Lady Karth is an evil villain who does evil things. Again, some of this can probably be chalked up to the fact that it was written in a month, but that doesn't mean the tropes aren't outdated or sexist.
I was also a bit weirded out by the dragons' fascination with Dionelle because of her whiteness. Dionelle's skin and hair are both white, the book tells us, and this whiteness makes her beautiful and fascinating to the dragons, who are all the colours of the rainbow. I found it interesting that dragons placed such a high value on very white Western standards of beauty, it's especially jarring because, apart from a brief mention of "foreigners" there are no characters of colour in this book near as I could tell. Heck, even the Dragoness Superior is a literal white dragon with blue accents. Perhaps it doesn't need to be said, but the book is also very heteronormative with the complete erasure of LGBT+ characters.
If what you're looking for is a typical love story with dragons, you could do much better than this book, but TBH, it's really not my cup of tea.
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