Ember and her brother Dante are young dragons sheltering
in the Talon, a world-wide organisation encompassing all dragons from the
genocidal threat of the Order of St George. It’s a threat that looms even as Ember chafes at the
restrictions Talon places on her – and the future it has planned for her.
Out in the human world for the first time, they are being hunted by St. George – including the hunter Garrett who is trying to discover which human in town is a dragon; and in doing so gets far closer to Ember than he expected.
When I saw this book I thought it seemed very original –
I mean, I haven’t read a lot of Urban Fantasy concerning dragons out there so
dragons having to pass as human and avoid being hunted while still being
quintessentially draconic seemed like an excellently different concept, one
I’ve only read once before.
Except it isn’t – because it doesn’t matter that these
creatures are dragons hunted by the Order of St. George. They could be vampires
hunted by the Order of Van Helsing. They could be werewolves hunted by the
Order of the Silver Bullet. They could be fae hunted by the Order of the Iron
Cross. They could be Telemarketers hunted by the Order of Screamed Obscenities
and Hanging Up. It’s irrelevant, the story would be identical. The actual kind
of supernatural being makes no difference at all to the plot, the character
development or anything else. It’s a tragic waste of world building,
development and original idea.
Ember herself is a horrendously generic character for
someone who is supposed to be non-human. She thinks like a teenaged girl (and
not a particularly smart one at that) not a dragon hatchling. Her mindset is
entirely human. The few tiny attempts to show that she isn’t human (her like of
shiny things) are miniscule mentions that don’t relate to the story. This is
not only a wasted opportunity but it makes little sense in the limited world
building provided and leaves Ember feeling like an extremely clichéd, generic
character which is terrible because she SHOULD be more alien than just about
anything I’ve read. She’s a giant firebreathing reptile, she was hatched from
an egg, she isn’t even a mammal. Her viewpoint should be so far from human (or
vampire or werewolf which are at least partially human!) as it’s possible to be
– but there is nothing different about her. Worse we have some weird elements
that just don’t fit and feel cribbed from other books – why does Ember refer to
her dragon wanting something? Why does she even use the lines “my dragon
wants…”? Why does she argue with “her dragon”? She is a dragon – not a
possessed or changed human, this makes no sense. It’d be like me saying “I
tried to walk past the shop, but my human was craving coffee”. I may try that
in future “I was going to finish that job, but my human was bored by it.” It’s
bizarre and feels like someone lifting “my wolf” lines from werewolf stories
without thinking whether they’re appropriate or not.
And why does a giant flying reptile have any sexual or
romantic interest in a small squishy ape anyway? Why isn’t their whole concept
of what is attractive and sexy and appealing completely alien? Why would a
creature without lips feel any excitement about kissing? There’s some attempt at
this with Ember originally not knowing what makes humans attractive, but that
all shatters when she sees her love interest so it comes off as less “I’m a
dragon and don’t care about squishy monkeys” and more “I only feel attracted to
my super special guy!” Which
is an oh-so-common trope.
Sadly, her complete lack of draconic nature isn’t the
only problem with Ember’s characterisation – there’s also a major problem with
Ember, the rebel-without-a-clue. Ember hates the Talon and it’s terrible
oppressiveness and is continually pushing against its rules, risking herself
and her brother as she continually pushes the boundaries and consorts with
illegal rogues. I could understand this is Talon was a terribly oppressive
organisation that Ember cannot endure…
…But we don’t see any of this particularly until the end
of the book. Sure, life under Talon isn’t happy happy fun and there’s a lot
less freedom than you’d get outside it, but at the same time they are actually
a species that is constantly hunted and under threat of extinction by a group
of genocidal hunters and/or exposure to the world. The book opens quite early
with Garrett, the principle love interest, hunting down and killing a dragon.
Talon expecting everyone to be members (and even makes a reasonable point that
dragons nearly became extinct BECAUSE they were independent and territorial and
refused to work together) and play by the rules doesn’t feel all that unreasonable
until the very very end of the book. But Ember is rebelling and investigating
and meeting Riley and all suspicious long before then. At the time when Ember
is acting out, she’s a 16 year old whining because she has lessons in the
morning (so only has the afternoon to surf and hang out with friends) and has a
curfew by midnight (the horror!) and she isn’t allowed to turn into a dragon
and fly over a human city and popular holiday destination. These rules aren’t
unreasonable, they aren’t oppressive and Ember comes across as a whiny,
tantrumming teenager because of it.
Which makes me all the more sympathetic towards Dante
who, I think, I’m supposed to see as betraying and abandoning his sister. She
is furious at him for mentioning Riley – who she hadn’t even spoken to at the
time – to Talon; actually following the law about reporting rogue, lawless
dragons to the powers that be. She is furious because he objects to her meeting
said Rogue (breaking the law herself), breaking curfew, flying where humans can
see her and generally doing her very best to ruin her and Dante’s life for
little good reason. This not only makes Ember a very annoying character who
quickly frustrated me but it makes so little sense – why is Ember doing her
level best to tear up her and her brother’s future like this? Why is she so
determined to meet this dangerous outlaw? Why is she so willing to protect him?
It feels like shaky writing – her motivation is provided AFTER her actions and
it really doesn’t work. I’m actually more annoyed that the Talon does turn out
to be highly oppressive because it was classic author validating the
character’s unjustified decisions.
The other characters are not especially developed.
Garrett is the improbably perfect super-soldier of St. George at the dubious
age of 17 sent to hunt down evil dragons but finds Ember super compelling and
then religious follows the script o YA love interests everywhere. Cobolt/Riley
is the rogue dragon (and plays Jacob to Garret’s Edward in the forced love
triangle) who has a passionate need to protect poor hatchlings from Talon –
until he meets Ember who is super special and worth risking all for. Yawn. Both
characters could have been lifted from any book
Other characters are background – we have some human
girls who talk about boys and shopping and are Ember’s friends though she seems
to find them immensely boring. Dante is meant to be seen as a good little
conformist but seems more like the island of sensibility in a sea of pretty
enraging characters. I can’t remember a single minority among the whole cast –
certainly not a memorable one.
I’m trying to think how best to summarise the overall
feel of this book without sounding too personal with this review, but my
overwhelming feel of this book is that it was phoned in. A huge amount of the
write-by-the-numbers tropes of YA where there – star-crossed romance, love
triangle, she’s a rebel without a clue, falling in love at first glance, etc
etc - all thrown together and then the word “dragons” slapped on top. The plotting
was shaky, the world building largely non-existent and the character
development and decisions pretty damn shoddy. It felt like someone writing
desperately to a deadline while hung over so they just threw something together
– and that end something isn’t bad in the “this was written by a drunken
aardvark on crack” sense so much as it was depressingly generic, lazy and dull.
You could read it and never be appalled or disgusted – just thoroughly
thoroughly bored and sure you’d read it 100 times before – because it’s pretty
indistinguishable from so much in the genre.
