Reviews

The Labyrinth of Drakes, the fourth volume for The Memoirs of Lady Trent presents itself in a drastic involvement in an unknown world's politics and justice for the scientific research of a pair of naturalist named Tom Wilker and Dame Isabella.

This book has been a wild ride and has been read whenever I am free and obliged to do so during my leisure time. I most thoroughly enjoyed every ounce of it. Unfortunately, I did not begin reading the book chronologically and I would have to warn you that this review is based on my insights from just the fourth book entirely.

First of all, the Author took the Memoir concept of the book quite accurately, she has adapted the
writing of the fictitious protagonist, Dame Isabella as a legitimate memoir whilst explaining her expedition and journey being an "Author" and a naturalist discovering dragon remnants and breeding research.

The Review

The "Author", Dame Isabella, is remarkably strong in terms of upholding her work ethics and it is encouraged by her proactive behavior for the love of Dragons from young. The world sets itself close to ours, with only an adjustment of its own fiction race, religion, culture and ethnic but with the same concept and prejudice. It is a wonderful read for anyone keen on taking hold of such perspective in the industry and relate to a certain extent. It reviews the struggles and victory feats of such challenges faced by women beautifully with a splash of realism.

Paired with her trusty colleague from previous books as its implied, Tom Wilker, sets himself to set on a voyage for an expedition for research but only if the officials allowed Dame Isabella to be set on course too. Portrayed as a trusty, reliable, daring and confident supporting character, he is certainly respectful of Dame Isabella's endeavors' from the past events faced together and wishes to experience this together.

The story starts giving a slow start and equipping the reader with a friendly interface to catch up with the past events with bits of information sprawled continuously by the "Author" herself to allow fresh readers to understand the backstory necessary for context. Most of the culture denies Dame Isabella's presence as a naturalist working and often scowled at her actions from trivial things being sensitive about her choice of clothing and her working in this industry.

Many challenges have been faced head on throughout Isabella's path and the adventure is not easy, ranging from small risks to encountering potential death based on the journey, it inspires the reader to support her with an emotional attachment as she is filled with a joyous potential to carry on, I found myself doing as mentioned.

The overall content

For a fantasy book, it is considered to be substantially more of a mirror world with many culture integrations but with a fictitious front. It's clearly an extract from our real world as it treats the exploration to an unknown species like any other in ours. It puts Dragons as though it's pure research. Thus the book isn't about dragons entirely, it revolves around the realism of our world and apply factors such as politics, economics, and cultural clashes. It is a great example for perspective of our real world but based from an eye of a keen and ethical women that wish to uncover mysteries of the world but is poured with many realistic obstacles along the way.

However it may be achieving its pathway to "realism", it has a light touch to the romance part of life and honestly it is absolutely my personal favorite when reading a fiction fantasy book. I would very much enjoy a fantasy world without a big portion for the romantic side of a story. It is justified accordingly as the "Author" devotes herself primarily to the research and discovery of the dragons over mostly anything else. In that sense, it isn't forced to be light, it's the right balance for a good book that's about dragons.

I loved the introduction of characters and everyone played it's specific role, the variety of personalities that each brings is vivid and memorable. The "Author" made sure she got most of the detail written down and explained to the core.

The world-building in this story alone is excellent and many stunning visual art has been drawn by the "Author" herself during her travels and published in this memoir of hers. It's a wonderful sight to see the story come live page by page with these art hidden beneath every turning act. It answers the calling for an excellent book about dragons and is at the utmost satisfaction level for any dragon fanatics out there who wish to dive into a world of it. The world has also been painted with many countries and states drawn out for the reader to feel much more engaged into the world that they are reading about. It's well done overall. You have things like Akhian, Aritats, Scirling, many fiction wonders that you would bounce back to thinking about throughout the read which I would not spoil for audiences that are superbly keen on trying the book out.

Recommendations

I would highly recommend females to try as it might relate to real life context that gives them a warm place to call to feel an emotional attachment to the character along her ventures. Males are highly encouraged to do so as well as it gives a wider perspective of the opposite gender in real life, prompting a convincing way to be an open-minded individual over time. Hence, this book can find itself to be enjoyable regardless of gender, but slightly more to females.

The content regarding age rating is rather low it does not have extremely vigorous scenes of any violent or sexual acts. At most, scenes of that description are leaned towards imagination or most of the time filled with brief summaries of the actions taken. It has a huge relevance towards political topics, as much as gender discrimination involved through slight religious connections. The romance portion is very light and does not cover up the book's content at all, it is rightly placed as it is, well balanced.

Conclusion

I enjoyed the book with what as described above, but my partial dislikes for this book that earns it 4 stars is that this book sometimes might be dry in the middle of carrying itself onto the next arc of the story but it is slightly justified because it is a memoir and the concept's nature is bound to be represented like this since its mostly day to day recording of actions and time skip when it gets extremely dry like a memoir should. No book is perfect, and that is my second reason for giving it 4 stars, I have and never will give a book 4 stars unless it puts me at awe.