Ember is recovering from the horrors she’s had to partake
in in a very short period of time – but she has little time to recover or get
her bearing. Riley has a new mission, a traitor in his ranks and a possible
lead where female dragons are tortured and enslaved to produce young: he cannot
let tjhis lead go.
At the same time Garrett uncovers a plot within the Order
of St John which similarly demands their urgent attention – and for Garret to
rejoin the team.
I mentioned this in my review of the previous book in
this series but I really need to reiterate it now because it’s so sad to me –
this book series does an incredible job of taking a really interesting,
potentially fascinating concept and making it Utterly Bland
Paint-by-the-numbers-Paranormal-YA.
It’s frustrating. There’s so much here that could be
interesting and different and generally unique and it’s all ignored in favour
of telling a story that is so utterly generic and forgettable that it’s
genuinely hard to write a review afterwards.
Take the supernatural – we have dragons here. Actual
dragons. Not weredragons or vampires or witches or some other
magically-enhanced human. No, this is a completely alien species. Think of how
we could explore how their minds work, think of the conflict this would cause
over them interacting with humans. Think of how their culture would be so
vastly different, how completely alien everything about them would be. But I
get no sense of Ember and Riley being anything but human. Or even Ember’s
brother Dante still working
with Talon. Or even the guys he’s working with. No dragon in this series has
shown themselves to have anything but a human mind set. Which is especially
frustrating because part of the attempted conflict of this book is Ember and
Riley wondering about whether or not they are becoming too human or not human
enough: but they’re not inhuman! We
also continue to have the weird “my dragon thinks/does/act” statements which
makes no real sense. Again, it’s like someone copying a generic “wereanimal”
storyline and not trying to actually adapt it to the original world building of
this world.
This is especially frustrating with the romance. I mean,
how would a romance even happen when the love interest is a huge lizard? “Let
us press our squishy mouth parts together, small warm blooded hairy monkey
creature.” Why does Ember even look at Garrett or Riley in human disguise and
think of them in a sexual way? I’m not saying don’t have this romance – I’m
saying develop this. Work with them AS alien beings finding love rather than
just ignoring it and pulling out a storyline that could easily sit in any
werewolf book out there.
Another frustration is Talon. I mean, the Order of St
George is a generic hunter organisation, fine, whatever – and the corruption
storyline is actually somewhat interesting. But Talon? Talon is a world-wide
organisation of dragons after power and control hunting down the naughty evil
rebels and any outsiders. Fine – but the reason why Talon was created was, we
were told, because dragons were literally facing extinction. They had to come
together, as a unified force, to protect themselves from St. George’s genocidal
campaign. Even now, part of Dante‘s spooky mission for Talon which is getting
him all conflicted is out of need for soldiers to fight.
But while we have an excellent job of really making it
clear that the Talon is well and truly evil, that’s beyond doubt. We can see
they’re definitely evil and corrupt and pretty soulless and the enemy they all
need to take down. But there’s no real analysis of what it means if Talon is
removed. There’s no consideration of how the dragons will survive is Talon is
gone. There’s no debate over whether Talon is necessary for the continued
survival of dragon kind, whether without Talon they will be devastated by St.
George or any other analysis of what Talon is for or what it does. And this should
be discussed. This could add so much nuance, should ask so many questions about
what the dragons would do without Talon
In fact, look at that – a generation, maybe several
generations, of dragons have grown up knowing Talon and only Talon. We even
have suggestions that Talon has erased entire concepts from draconic culture in
order to make everyone better Talon agents – there are implications to damaging
this organisation which is quite literally the only culture most of these dragons
have. These are debates, complexities, problems which are just ignored.
Gah, you could replace “dragon” with “weremole” and not
appreciably change the story. You could transport these characters into any
pretty generic YA and not change the story. The story itself is just so lacking
in anything distinctive – the big evil organisation is doing big evil things
while the protagonists focus on their love triangle: anything more interesting
or potentially useful (like the draconic fight against extinction or the
Eastern Dragons) are just side notes that don’t add enough to the story to
change the basic generic set up.
I’m just frustrated that all this potential to be
something different just doesn’t seem to be explored at all.
We have the introduction of the Eastern Dragons which
could definitely be interesting, add new concepts of dragonhood and explore
draconic culture. It also adds so much needed racial and gender diversity to
this all white and heavily-skewed male series (there continue to be no LGBTQ
characters). Except she appears, declares Talon evil, apparent lives in a
Temple with lots of monks being vaguely spiritual in some way, Ooooooommmmm…
and that’s about it. Any more detail or involvement or… nope? Ooookay then.
This ill-defined monk-connection apparently gives her useful people in the west
as well…?
