This is not a good book, and the review may contain some spoilers.
Romance is not my genre, but I have found a couple of books that I did enjoy within it. I read a fair amount of fantasy and typically will enjoy a well written fantasy novel. Romantasy is a mash up genre I've never really tried as it didn't appeal. Therefore I was a bit apprehensive before i even picked this one up.
Even with not much hope of a good book, this managed to subceed (is that the opposite of exceed?) my expectations on almost every level.
The one claim this book can make to originality is that when dragons die, they calcify and float into the sky to become more moons. Although even Doctor Who had an episode where the moon hatched and a dragon flew out so this could be argued to be a variant on that.
On a world populated by magical fae and dragons, Raeve is an unstoppable paid assassin capable of taking out any target and disappearing into the shadows. Kaan is the dragon-riding king of a neighbouring land. She's fierce and independent and doesn't need a man in her life, but just like that fast show character of the tough woman, every time that Kaan is near her she pretty much loses it with lust and all her abilities seem to fly out of the window.
We have the traditional hate to love narrative which is annoying enough in a well written book, but in this it's the most irritating I've ever seen it. Every time they meet for the first 400 pages he's saving her life, or healing her wounds, rescuing her from imminent danger while she simultaneously announces how much she hates him, tries to run away from him and tells us readers how much she wants his body. It gets old very quickly.
I know there are only so many stories, and fantasy has a lot of familiar tropes, but some fantasy authors can make the old tropes feel like something new and original. Parker takes the tropes and runs them all in the most predictable fashion possible. Every plot twist seems to be ripped off from a million better books. At one point she escapes from Kaan, and finds herself captured by a warrior tribe, who instantly invoke the ancient prophecy standard, and proclaim her their queen with a title that is just far enough from the word Khaleesi to avoid being sued for a direct copy.
All this predictability might be excused if the writing was up to par. But this is the worst written book I've completed in years. She seems to have favourite words which she uses multiple times in a handful of pages, whether they're good word choices or not. In the first real chapter of the book, she uses the word "demure" five times in three pages.
Later on, when she's been captured by the warrior tribe and they're fighting to the death to see which of them should take her as their bride, in a matter of 4 or 5 pages, characters "fist" handfuls of sand, weapons, and assorted other objects at least a dozen times. In a chapter close to the end, in a protracted and cringeworthy sex scene, Kaan fists first her hair and then "his own length". In a chapter from the main villains point of view, he also "fists" his "solid cock". Someone really needs to point Parker in the direction of the words Grab, Hold, Grasp, Clench, Grip, Seize, or any one of the dozens of better words she could have used.
Speaking of cringeworthy sex scenes, (these thankfully only take up two chapters) Raeve refers to her lady parts as her throbbing entrance at least 5 times in those two short chapters. She refers to her heart as the hard organ inside her chest dozens of times throughout the book. It's a sign that she's softening when it just becomes the organ in her chest.
In Kaan's chapters, he also refers to the organ in his chest multiple times. This highlights another basic flaw in the writing. If writing first person narratives from multiple points of view, you should be able to tell the difference between the voices. You can't. The villain swears more in his chapter than the other three narrators, but they all have the exact same verbal tics and phrasing.
And.
The.
Strange.
Emphasis.
Thing.
That happens at least twice in every chapter. I think I counted 8 times in one of them.
It's all very poor, repetitive, very derivative, repetitive and predictable, with the most annoying and cliched characters I've had the misfortune to read about in years. The plotting is lazy in the extreme. When she's decided she needs to get revenge on the man who captured and tortured her in the early chapters, but instead settles down for sex fantasies with Kaan in a cabin in the forest, the villain conveniently decides to travel to Kaan's kingdom for a visit allowing her to seek her revenge without having to really put any effort into the search for him.
The reveals as we get close to the end of the book are not shocking. They're painfully obvious set ups for book two. I was seriously considering DNFing this book with only 50 pages to go out of 570. The best I can say about the ending is that they at least cleared up one plotline.
In case anyone was wondering, I will not be reading book two.
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