Mason Monteith

Disclaimer: I received this book for free in return for an honest review from LibraryThing.

Audrey Hughes is a young librarian living in the country of Flaize. A country where a mysterious deadly disease is spreading. A country that is also on the verge of war with the neighboring country of Dragnoir, a country of dragons. After the sudden death of her friend Lady Farah Davies, one of the leaders of Audrey's district, she discovers Farah left her everything. In her new position of her new position of power it is up to Audrey to save her home before it is too late.

I found the idea behind this book to be interesting, however I felt that this book fell short of its potential. I found it to be predictable and I felt it could use some more world building in the beginning of the book.… (altro)

A mysterious illness sweeps the borders of Flaize while magic is dying in Dragnior. And of course, everyone wants to blame the other. This book follows Audrey, a young librarian who had to drop out of school to care for and support her younger brother, her injured father and her sick mother (who sneaks money to try false cures). After Farah dies and leaves everything to her, Audrey is swept into the darkness that she has always sensed around the board's abbey and gets drawn into all their secrets, darkness and lies. Along with Julian ,who she (initially) hates, it is up to Audrey to try stop a war that the humans have no chance of winning between the Dragonkin (essentially shape shifting dragons) and a war obsessed prince and his far too supportive advisor.

After reading what this book was about, I went in fully expecting to love it - dragons, magic, mysterious and dark secrets: what's not to love! And I definitely loved the plot. While I did see some of the twists coming, there were others I didn't expect. This is definitely a fascinating world, although I definitely found myself more interested in the Dragonkin society than the human one (although is that really that unexpected?). I also enjoyed the random snippets from newspaper articles and such at the start of each chapter. I have always enjoyed these kinds of extra insights into the larger world in fantasy novels. I am curious to see if there will be a sequel to this or not. While it definitely has a satisfying ending, it is definitely open enough to allow for more story to follow.

Onto the slightly less good of the book: I feel like it could use another edit. Wile there is nothing that would break the book or anything that takes away significantly from its enjoyment, there are a few minor errors here and there. There are also a few odd choices and there's one point where I think a sentence may have accidentally have been left in as it is pretty much identical to the previous one. I also found myself a little frustrated by the last pages as it felt like the author was trying to squash in some last explanations in far too little space. I would have loved it if this (important) information had been given the time and space it deserves.
While it does have some minor flaws, I did very much enjoy this book. I would definitely reccomend it to lovers of fantasy novels and those who are interested in inter-intelligent race (and dragon) relations.… (altro)