Three thousand years ago, immortal blue dragon Belah and her old lover took their kinks just a step too far, and she's been trying to get over it ever since. The problem is that her ex is still out there wreaking havoc on her world, while Belah spent the last three millennia in hiding.
With her race's world changing, it's time for Belah to show her face again. Finding a new mate should be easy for a dragon as powerful as her, but "baggage" is an understatement when your ex is your race's mortal enemy, and he's just let you know he wants you back.
Determined to move on, Belah finds Lukas and Iszak North--not one, but two gorgeous, musically talented, and especially kinky brothers from one of the dragons' sister races. The pair are perfect for Belah. Their race of falcon shifters mate for life--one look at Belah, and both North brothers know she's their One. The problem is, they have baggage of their own, and Belah's old lover is at the center of it. The brothers can't help but love her in spite of her past, and when Belah answers their mating call and gives herself to them completely, they would do anything to keep her, even forgive her connection to their enemy.
When Belah's old lover calls in a promise, she and her new mates learn there is more at stake than love, and it might take more than fancy knots and an adeptly wielded whip to find true happiness.
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| average for series |
2 Hearts
When I picked up Dragon Blues I believed it to be MMF. It is not and apparently wasn't tagged as such either so I can't really knock it for not being something it never claimed to be. I can say I was a wee bit disappointed, though. There is one FF scene that is over in a blink and I believe Lucas could claim heteroflexiblity, but in a nutshell this book isn't really appropriate for this blog. However the stories interconnect and come as a package, so let's keep this short, shall we?
Belah is an immortal dragon shifter who's been around since forever. She's got a crazy ex-boyfriend and is missing a couple "babies" (actually adults) that she'll do just about anything to find but is also longing for a mate. As lucky would have it, she finds two (Lucas and Iszak) who are falcon shifters and brothers which, I suspect, is why they don't cross the streams. They fall in instalove which works considerably better for me in shifter stories, but I still find it jarring when there's minimal supporting evidence of said love. Not only was there no relationship development or showing their connection but they're almost immediately spouting off about impregnating her!
Erm... Not a fan of this sort of thing in my reads, particularly not my kinky/porny reads, though this was less porny than I envisioned (hoped).
There are a few meager attempts at worldbuilding that are pedestrian and a whole gaggle of borderline bizarre plot twists that I hope to all that's holy are going somewhere. And not somewhere hokey either. The character voices were my biggest stumbling block, especially Belah's. For someone who's ancient she's not very wise or mature, though none of them are well developed nor are they eloquent which I found odd.
The kink is good, though. I particularly liked the suspension bondage scene. That merits a star on its own.
A Turul princess, Evie North has waited long enough for her “one true love” — a man she’s stopped believing truly exists. She throws caution—literally—to the wind and decides to take matters into her own hands. She chooses a handsome stranger from a crowd and falls into bed with him, hoping love might find her in his arms.
A human man drawn to powers beyond his comprehension...
The only thing Marcus Calais knows is that he’s likely to die in a pointless war but also honor-bound to run into battle. At least until he meets an angel named Evie in Central Park who incites stronger desires than he’s ever had and whose songs drive him to levels of passion he never imagined. After just one night with the lovely, waifish beauty, he discovers he has so much more to live for. Will he sacrifice his principles to stay alive for her?
The immortal dragon who owns both their souls...
“Ked” is what his five siblings call him, but others simply refer to the huge black dragon as The Void. He is darkness personified, but nothing is darker than the enemy he is up against. It will take true darkness to fight the evil permeating his world, and to save the female Fate intended for him. But Fate has a funny way of switching things up when he least expects. What will he find when he ventures forth into the enemy’s lair in search of love?
What other surprises does Fate have in store?
Publisher's Note: Dragon Void is a full-length novel with a complete resolution between the characters involved. They get their Happily Ever After, but sometimes Fate doesn't make it easy.
1 Heart
Two words: Hot Mess
The second in this series didn't work for me at all. On any level. It's not my place to tell anyone how to do anything, particularly an author but I can say (until the cows come home) that this story is not what I wanted to read.
I would ask that you to read the blurb. I'll wait.
Now, tell me doesn't that blurb read like a ménage romance of some sort? Show of hands? Me too! Do not be hoodwinked like I was because Dragon Void isn't a romance and, yeah, I'm kinda fussy about that.
The trouble is I'm not quite sure what it is or what it wants to be. The worldbuilding gets no better in this book. I let it slide in book 1 because it was more urban fantasy but this is rife with fantasy possibilities and I found the lack of worldbuilding hugely disappointing. There are several mentions of an organization called the Ultiori but no real explanation of what they do or why they're so dreaded. There's a dragon monastery in this one! A. Dragon. Monastery. that just sits there like a... well, like a... like a monastery, I guess.
I would *think* a triad romance would primarily build the triad, show how they all contribute and bring something to the relationship, develop these characters and maybe delve into how they might work out the logistics of a potentially tricky endeavor. I would be wrong.
It took them to almost the 40% mark just to get Evie and Marcus back to the Dragon Monastery! That's just travel time, folks. Most of which one or the other of them were passed out cold from their injuries, the rest of the time is spent rehashing recent events. We got up to well past the 60% mark with flashbacks of Evie and Marcus's history which is bursting with 1960s draft remembrances and a whole lotta Vietnam era sentiments which came across slightly didactic and largely pointless considering we already knew they had history as a couple.
I thought for sure once they reached the monastery they would start coming together as a triad. Nope. I mean, they take a few trips to the bone zone and the word "mate" is bandied about but sex doesn't equate to a long-lasting relationship nor does it make a romance. Instead time was spent head hopping between the three of them with more 60s flashbacks and we even head hopped to Nikhil (Belah's ex) who's on a mission to find whatever possessed him, complete with time jumps and some clunky, quasi-forced efforts to shoehorn him into Belah's triad.
Also, did I mention that Evie's knocked up BEFORE the 50% mark? Yeah, super happy about that plot development which actually morphed into the death knell for this book.
So... SPOILERS!
Since Marcus was made immortal by Ked and his brother's blood and Marcus knocked up Evie, Evie's baby has special "needs". Namely the semen of all of them.
I'll let that sink in for a minute.
In the hands of a different author this plot twist might've worked for me, but given the fact that the three of them hadn't even convinced me of their commitment to each other to then have the female lead hit the bone zone of her brand new mate's two brothers seemed like random squirrelly storytelling to me and not really that romantic either.
Last but not least, the sex wasn't that hot. The MM scenes were vaguely insulting. I'm not going to go into specifics but there were some poorly chosen words IMO, things that made me twitchy with regard to Marcus's deflowering and just generally the whole kit and kaboodle had the words 'get correct' rumbling through my head. To add insult to injury, no kink!
The narrative is too busy for me, much of it doesn't make sense and the writing is amateurish. I highly doubt I'll be reading anything else by this author in the future nor would I recommend this series to others.
Review copies were provided.
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