Scan barcode
A review by desiree_mcl
Dragonsworn by Sherrilyn Kenyon
3.0
3 stars.
This was ok. I wasn’t completely swept away with the romance but I did like the two of them together. Would have loved to see more moments with them. I liked that Medea really seemed to care about Falcyn and he cared about her.
There is a sickness happening to the Daimons that will kill them in a short period of time, caused by Apollo (I think?), Medea, Stryker and Zeyphyra’s daughter, needs Falcyn’s dragonstone to help cure her family. Meanwhile Falcyn gets some personal bombs dropped on him and some other people want his dragonstone as well. Then Falcyn, Medea, Blaise, and Urian get transported to another realm. Now they have to get out of this realm and back to their own to save the Daimons and/or Apollites (or at least Medea’s family).
The characters were, all right. Medea, although she was supposed to be evil, didn’t show a whole hell of a lot of evilness. She rather pleasant. If she wasn’t supposed to be a bad guy, I wouldn’t have minded that but she was supposed to be a bad guy and she did very little to nothing to show that she had any kind of evil in her.
I am really interested in seeing if Maddor get’s a book, I really liked him. And I hope Blaise and Brogan get their own book. They were a cute secondary couple/tentative steps toward couple-dom that I was liking more than the main couple.
And I love that we finally get a mention of Xander and Brynna in this book. I’ve been wanting their book for a long time now. As have many fans. I need Xander and Brynna’s book.
All right…strap in ladies and gents…I’m going a little ranty in this next section.
Didn’t really mean to but this is what ended up happening as I was sorting through how I was going to review this. I know it won’t seem like it by the end but, as mentioned above, I didn’t hate this book, it was ok. Certainly not a favorite but definitely not one of my least favorites but Dragonsworn has a lot of similar issues as many of the previous 10-15 (or so) books that have annoyed/bothered me.
All right, let’s get into it.
In the previous book I loved the beginning half and then was disappointed in the second half. However with Dragonsworn, I was fairly neutral the whole time. There was nothing amazing and there was nothing hugely disappointing, it was just ‘meh’. At least with the previous one I could love and enjoy the first half but Dragonsworn didn’t invoke any strong feelings except annoyance. And that hurts my heart. I love Sherrilyn Kenyon’s world’s, for the most part (I am having difficulty getting into her League series), but I can bust through one of SK’s books in a couple days, even when I’m not completely enjoying them, but it took me a week to finish this one, which is definitely longer than normal. Now, I fully admit, I am getting out of a weird reading mood lately, so that may have had something to do with it.
One major problem that I had was the massive amount of info dumping. It seemed like every conversation had to do with explaining something, who someone was, what the realm was, where they were, what someone was, the history of the world, etc. I still, after 300+ pages, feel like I don’t know Medea and Falcyn. I know their backstories but nothing much about their likes or dislikes or who they are.
I know, from various interviews and answers to questions that she’s posted, that SK wants this series to be a series where you can pick up from any book in the series and still be able to mostly follow what’s going on. I think that’s working against her. It’s book 28, long time readers of the series don’t need this much info being thrown at them and if they’re anything like me, will get frustrated and bored with reading the same thing over and over again in every single book because it needs to be explained to newer readers of the series.
Guess what it’s Book 28!!! if a new reader picks this up and opens to the first page after the title page and sees the large list of books that have come before this one I hope they set this one down and go searching for the first book or even the first few books. I originally started this series on Zarek and Astrid’s book, which is book 3. I was slightly lost but not enough where I couldn’t enjoy the story. I think in those first 5 or so books in an on-going series you can get away with a little more info and explaining because it’s still a fairly new world that you’re introducing but once you reach book 28, please, stop with the explaining of e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g! Plus in almost every book now we find out that what we’ve been told for 20+ books is now slightly altered because of this new info we’re being told about. It makes keeping track of characters and stories and worlds nearly impossible.
On the subject of too much info, we have the characters from one of her other series, written under her Kinley MacGregor name, Lords of Avalon, coming in a lot. I think it was peppered into some of the previous installments of this dragon arc and the 1 or 2 other dragon stories we got earlier (I think there was a short story, like 1.5 in the series, that dealt with a dragon and his dragonswan) but here we get it a lot. I’ve only read the first one in that series, I did enjoy the one book I read, the other one is on my list of books to read. But we have so many other pantheons to remember in this series already that even adding a little bit of another is just annoying.
I also just miss the “normalcy” that was mixed into this fantastical world. Amanda, Bride, Tabitha, Sunshine, etc all had regular, normal, everyday things that were shown. They went to work, had roommates, went to clubs, they had lives outside of the paranormal. There was a delicious balance of paranormal and normal. Now, it’s just paranormal everywhere. I’m exhausted after finishing a Dark Hunter novel...which brings me to something else that has been annoying me…
Where Are All My Dark-Hunters?! Where Are My Squires!?
I miss the simplicity of something horrible happening to the pre Dark-Hunter/Were-Hunter, Artemis coming in turning them to a Dark/Were-Hunter, and then FF a few hundred/thousand years and now, after meeting the love of their life, they need to get out of the “contract” of being a Dark/Were-Hunter. I miss that. I miss seeing the Squire’s dealing with and taking care of their Dark Hunter’s day time errands.
As I brought up above, one of the two major problems I had with Medea was that she was technically supposed to be on the evil team. And Falcyn was supposed to be on the “good” team…maybe the more “neutral” team. It was mentioned that she did do some bad things to a character but honestly I don’t remember her in any of the other books but there are so many characters mentioned that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of people’s names, but in this book, no real evil acts were done. The second major issue I had, and I realize this is going to sound cold and uncaring but after 150/200 pages I didn’t care anymore that Medea’s husband and child were killed eleven hundred years ago. When it was first brought up, I was sad for her and felt for her but then every 20-30 pages it was brought up again a couple times. After a certain point I Did. Not. Care.
And lastly…the romance…eh. In the earlier books I was enthralled by the romance unfolding and seeing how the two characters fell in love. In a lot of the later books it’s mostly looks, ‘I’ve never felt this before’ kind of feelings fairly early on, and a couple of conversations…witty banter…between the two that makes them look at the other in a different light. Unfortunately, the romance, when it’s there and what little there is, gets lost in the massive amount of info dumps and then the two characters are suddenly by themselves long enough to get sexual and then we move on. That does not make a satisfying romance to me.
And I don’t know if it was just me but the ending Is that just something I’m remembering wrong? Was that ever revealed earlier?
Anyway, I did have some fun with this book, it bruises my Dark-Hunter heart to give it a low-ish rating and to get as annoyed as I have at it but this wasn’t great.
This was ok. I wasn’t completely swept away with the romance but I did like the two of them together. Would have loved to see more moments with them. I liked that Medea really seemed to care about Falcyn and he cared about her.
There is a sickness happening to the Daimons that will kill them in a short period of time, caused by Apollo (I think?), Medea, Stryker and Zeyphyra’s daughter, needs Falcyn’s dragonstone to help cure her family. Meanwhile Falcyn gets some personal bombs dropped on him and some other people want his dragonstone as well. Then Falcyn, Medea, Blaise, and Urian get transported to another realm. Now they have to get out of this realm and back to their own to save the Daimons and/or Apollites (or at least Medea’s family).
The characters were, all right. Medea, although she was supposed to be evil, didn’t show a whole hell of a lot of evilness. She rather pleasant. If she wasn’t supposed to be a bad guy, I wouldn’t have minded that but she was supposed to be a bad guy and she did very little to nothing to show that she had any kind of evil in her.
I am really interested in seeing if Maddor get’s a book, I really liked him. And I hope Blaise and Brogan get their own book. They were a cute secondary couple/tentative steps toward couple-dom that I was liking more than the main couple.
And I love that we finally get a mention of Xander and Brynna in this book. I’ve been wanting their book for a long time now. As have many fans. I need Xander and Brynna’s book.
All right…strap in ladies and gents…I’m going a little ranty in this next section.
Didn’t really mean to but this is what ended up happening as I was sorting through how I was going to review this. I know it won’t seem like it by the end but, as mentioned above, I didn’t hate this book, it was ok. Certainly not a favorite but definitely not one of my least favorites but Dragonsworn has a lot of similar issues as many of the previous 10-15 (or so) books that have annoyed/bothered me.
All right, let’s get into it.
In the previous book I loved the beginning half and then was disappointed in the second half. However with Dragonsworn, I was fairly neutral the whole time. There was nothing amazing and there was nothing hugely disappointing, it was just ‘meh’. At least with the previous one I could love and enjoy the first half but Dragonsworn didn’t invoke any strong feelings except annoyance. And that hurts my heart. I love Sherrilyn Kenyon’s world’s, for the most part (I am having difficulty getting into her League series), but I can bust through one of SK’s books in a couple days, even when I’m not completely enjoying them, but it took me a week to finish this one, which is definitely longer than normal. Now, I fully admit, I am getting out of a weird reading mood lately, so that may have had something to do with it.
One major problem that I had was the massive amount of info dumping. It seemed like every conversation had to do with explaining something, who someone was, what the realm was, where they were, what someone was, the history of the world, etc. I still, after 300+ pages, feel like I don’t know Medea and Falcyn. I know their backstories but nothing much about their likes or dislikes or who they are.
I know, from various interviews and answers to questions that she’s posted, that SK wants this series to be a series where you can pick up from any book in the series and still be able to mostly follow what’s going on. I think that’s working against her. It’s book 28, long time readers of the series don’t need this much info being thrown at them and if they’re anything like me, will get frustrated and bored with reading the same thing over and over again in every single book because it needs to be explained to newer readers of the series.
Guess what it’s Book 28!!! if a new reader picks this up and opens to the first page after the title page and sees the large list of books that have come before this one I hope they set this one down and go searching for the first book or even the first few books. I originally started this series on Zarek and Astrid’s book, which is book 3. I was slightly lost but not enough where I couldn’t enjoy the story. I think in those first 5 or so books in an on-going series you can get away with a little more info and explaining because it’s still a fairly new world that you’re introducing but once you reach book 28, please, stop with the explaining of e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g! Plus in almost every book now we find out that what we’ve been told for 20+ books is now slightly altered because of this new info we’re being told about. It makes keeping track of characters and stories and worlds nearly impossible.
On the subject of too much info, we have the characters from one of her other series, written under her Kinley MacGregor name, Lords of Avalon, coming in a lot. I think it was peppered into some of the previous installments of this dragon arc and the 1 or 2 other dragon stories we got earlier (I think there was a short story, like 1.5 in the series, that dealt with a dragon and his dragonswan) but here we get it a lot. I’ve only read the first one in that series, I did enjoy the one book I read, the other one is on my list of books to read. But we have so many other pantheons to remember in this series already that even adding a little bit of another is just annoying.
I also just miss the “normalcy” that was mixed into this fantastical world. Amanda, Bride, Tabitha, Sunshine, etc all had regular, normal, everyday things that were shown. They went to work, had roommates, went to clubs, they had lives outside of the paranormal. There was a delicious balance of paranormal and normal. Now, it’s just paranormal everywhere. I’m exhausted after finishing a Dark Hunter novel...which brings me to something else that has been annoying me…
Where Are All My Dark-Hunters?! Where Are My Squires!?
I miss the simplicity of something horrible happening to the pre Dark-Hunter/Were-Hunter, Artemis coming in turning them to a Dark/Were-Hunter, and then FF a few hundred/thousand years and now, after meeting the love of their life, they need to get out of the “contract” of being a Dark/Were-Hunter. I miss that. I miss seeing the Squire’s dealing with and taking care of their Dark Hunter’s day time errands.
As I brought up above, one of the two major problems I had with Medea was that she was technically supposed to be on the evil team. And Falcyn was supposed to be on the “good” team…maybe the more “neutral” team. It was mentioned that she did do some bad things to a character but honestly I don’t remember her in any of the other books but there are so many characters mentioned that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of people’s names, but in this book, no real evil acts were done. The second major issue I had, and I realize this is going to sound cold and uncaring but after 150/200 pages I didn’t care anymore that Medea’s husband and child were killed eleven hundred years ago. When it was first brought up, I was sad for her and felt for her but then every 20-30 pages it was brought up again a couple times. After a certain point I Did. Not. Care.
And lastly…the romance…eh. In the earlier books I was enthralled by the romance unfolding and seeing how the two characters fell in love. In a lot of the later books it’s mostly looks, ‘I’ve never felt this before’ kind of feelings fairly early on, and a couple of conversations…witty banter…between the two that makes them look at the other in a different light. Unfortunately, the romance, when it’s there and what little there is, gets lost in the massive amount of info dumps and then the two characters are suddenly by themselves long enough to get sexual and then we move on. That does not make a satisfying romance to me.
And I don’t know if it was just me but the ending
Spoiler
where we find out Phoebe is alive, wasn’t that already mentioned in a previous installment? I was not surprised at all at that reveal, in fact I stopped and looked at the book, even asking the book (like it would answer) didn’t we already know that?Anyway, I did have some fun with this book, it bruises my Dark-Hunter heart to give it a low-ish rating and to get as annoyed as I have at it but this wasn’t great.