Abe, Shana - Queen of Dragons
This is the third book in Abe's drakon series, which is apparently slated for five books total.
I've enjoyed Abe's romances since The Secret Swan because of her heroines, who tend to be desperate and scrabbling for their lives, and not in a spunky, happy way. I particularly like the sense of how constrained they are by society and how they are fighting tooth and claw (even the non-drakon ones) for survival. The minus side is that Abe tends to pair these heroines with alpha males, and as such, I tend to be very dissatisfied by the endings, as they feel like the heroines get shoehorned into exactly what they were protesting and supposedly don't mind anymore because at least they get True Love and hot sex.
(This is, by the way, why I like The Last Mermaid stories and The Dream Thief most, because the heroine actually gets what she wants in the end. Er. Though I actually still love Secret Swan because it hits on so many of my personal buttons that I sort of handwave the ending.)
Unfortunately, this book doesn't follow the trend of The Dream Thief and instead goes with The Smoke Thief, so I ended up feeling like a very powerful woman got shortchanged and married off to an alpha male who loves her but also continues to exercise his privilege at every level.
Anyway. Plot: Maricara is the sister of the prince of Zaharen Yce, a community of the drakon that the Darkfirth drakon didn't realize existed. She's nominally a princess but is actually the ruler, and has been since the death of her husband when she was eleven. Maricara is awesome. I love her desperation and her attempts to hold on to her precarious position by every means possible, and I love her mix of bravado and vulnerability.
Unfortunately, I mostly want to hit Kimber over the head with a giant stick. He's now the alpha for Darkfirth, ever since his parents left to search for Lia (plot leftovers from the last book). I hate the drakon council, and I particularly hate that Kimber thinks nothing of invading Mari's country. And that Mari ends up marrying him anyway to lessen the bloodshed. Because of this, I stubbornly wanted Mari/Rhys, despite the fact that Kimber is the hero. I was also particularly grumpy at how Kimber acknowledged Mari as a king, but how the title is "Queen of Dragons" and how in the end, she takes on the title of "queen" instead.
In conclusion: yay Mari, boo Kimber. Maybe the next book will have less shoehorning, as it seems to star Rhys, who is thankfully not the alpha leader of people.
I've enjoyed Abe's romances since The Secret Swan because of her heroines, who tend to be desperate and scrabbling for their lives, and not in a spunky, happy way. I particularly like the sense of how constrained they are by society and how they are fighting tooth and claw (even the non-drakon ones) for survival. The minus side is that Abe tends to pair these heroines with alpha males, and as such, I tend to be very dissatisfied by the endings, as they feel like the heroines get shoehorned into exactly what they were protesting and supposedly don't mind anymore because at least they get True Love and hot sex.
(This is, by the way, why I like The Last Mermaid stories and The Dream Thief most, because the heroine actually gets what she wants in the end. Er. Though I actually still love Secret Swan because it hits on so many of my personal buttons that I sort of handwave the ending.)
Unfortunately, this book doesn't follow the trend of The Dream Thief and instead goes with The Smoke Thief, so I ended up feeling like a very powerful woman got shortchanged and married off to an alpha male who loves her but also continues to exercise his privilege at every level.
Anyway. Plot: Maricara is the sister of the prince of Zaharen Yce, a community of the drakon that the Darkfirth drakon didn't realize existed. She's nominally a princess but is actually the ruler, and has been since the death of her husband when she was eleven. Maricara is awesome. I love her desperation and her attempts to hold on to her precarious position by every means possible, and I love her mix of bravado and vulnerability.
Unfortunately, I mostly want to hit Kimber over the head with a giant stick. He's now the alpha for Darkfirth, ever since his parents left to search for Lia (plot leftovers from the last book). I hate the drakon council, and I particularly hate that Kimber thinks nothing of invading Mari's country. And that Mari ends up marrying him anyway to lessen the bloodshed. Because of this, I stubbornly wanted Mari/Rhys, despite the fact that Kimber is the hero. I was also particularly grumpy at how Kimber acknowledged Mari as a king, but how the title is "Queen of Dragons" and how in the end, she takes on the title of "queen" instead.
In conclusion: yay Mari, boo Kimber. Maybe the next book will have less shoehorning, as it seems to star Rhys, who is thankfully not the alpha leader of people.