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A review by briarrose1021
The Priestess and the Dragon by Nicolette Andrews
4.0
Suzume's life is going great. She lives in a palace, is adored by many, and is betrothed to the general of the military. It's amazing. Right up until it's all taken away from her because her mother's marriage to the Emperor is considered null and void, and the legitimacy of all of her children's birth revoked. Suddenly, Suzume is exiled. No palace, no adoration, no fiance. Instead, she's sent to a small shrine in a remote village to serve as a priestess. With no spiritual pressure.
Life cannot get any worse.
Until it does.
Suzume manages to awaken a dragon who has been sealed away for five hundred years. In addition, When she frees the dragon, she catches fire - but doesn't burn. What?! Yeah. So now Suzume has new powers to try and control, a dragon hell-bent on revenge to stop, and a brand new plan to get back to her old life.
Just as long as everything goes according to plan.
From the blurb, I was really looking forward to reading this book. It started out well. It just never really pulled me in. Suzume kept getting on my nerves with all of her whining and I just didn't really care if she was successful or if she walked off the edge of a cliff. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Dawn Cromwell, and I'm not sure if the problem was just the prose, or if it was the narrator leaning into the self-centeredness of Suzume and making her sound whinier when speaking. This is the first audiobook narrated by Cromwell that I have listened to, so I don't have anything else of hers to compare this one to for clarity on that question. Either way, I found my attention waning in several places and not having any motivation to rewind and listen to the parts again.
Even with waning attention, I still had no problem following the plot, which tells me it was too long. If I can only half-listen to an audiobook and still follow everything that's happening, there's a problem. In the case of this one, a major problem was the repetition. It seemed like at least once a chapter, we got to hear Suzume whine about how terrible her life is, how she wants to get back to her life in the palace, and how her life isn't fair.
Add to that her interactions with the dragon, all of which seemed to go back and forth between "He's never going to see me as me and not a reincarnation of her ancestor who he loved but who also sealed him into the shrine" and "I hate the dragon, he annoys me, I don't ever want to see him again once I get back to my life in the palace." Granted, there were varying levels of each of these extremes, but the back and forth was ANNOYING.
Had I not been reading/listening to this book in exchange for an honest review, I probably would have stopped in before I reached the halfway point and moved on. And that saddens me because I have loved every other book by Nicolette Andrews I have read/listened to.
I don't think this book was bad, it just was not for me - and that's why I'm still giving it 4 stars. The story has good bones, and had I been in the mood to listen to teenager angst, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Unfortunately, from the blurb, I was expecting a lot more action and a LOT less angst, and I was thus disappointed.
I don't know if I'll continue the series or not, but if I do, I will be reading it instead of listening to the audiobook, just in case my issue was the narrator leaning into the whining that turned me off this one.
Life cannot get any worse.
Until it does.
Suzume manages to awaken a dragon who has been sealed away for five hundred years. In addition, When she frees the dragon, she catches fire - but doesn't burn. What?! Yeah. So now Suzume has new powers to try and control, a dragon hell-bent on revenge to stop, and a brand new plan to get back to her old life.
Just as long as everything goes according to plan.
From the blurb, I was really looking forward to reading this book. It started out well. It just never really pulled me in. Suzume kept getting on my nerves with all of her whining and I just didn't really care if she was successful or if she walked off the edge of a cliff. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Dawn Cromwell, and I'm not sure if the problem was just the prose, or if it was the narrator leaning into the self-centeredness of Suzume and making her sound whinier when speaking. This is the first audiobook narrated by Cromwell that I have listened to, so I don't have anything else of hers to compare this one to for clarity on that question. Either way, I found my attention waning in several places and not having any motivation to rewind and listen to the parts again.
Even with waning attention, I still had no problem following the plot, which tells me it was too long. If I can only half-listen to an audiobook and still follow everything that's happening, there's a problem. In the case of this one, a major problem was the repetition. It seemed like at least once a chapter, we got to hear Suzume whine about how terrible her life is, how she wants to get back to her life in the palace, and how her life isn't fair.
Add to that her interactions with the dragon, all of which seemed to go back and forth between "He's never going to see me as me and not a reincarnation of her ancestor who he loved but who also sealed him into the shrine" and "I hate the dragon, he annoys me, I don't ever want to see him again once I get back to my life in the palace." Granted, there were varying levels of each of these extremes, but the back and forth was ANNOYING.
Had I not been reading/listening to this book in exchange for an honest review, I probably would have stopped in before I reached the halfway point and moved on. And that saddens me because I have loved every other book by Nicolette Andrews I have read/listened to.
I don't think this book was bad, it just was not for me - and that's why I'm still giving it 4 stars. The story has good bones, and had I been in the mood to listen to teenager angst, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Unfortunately, from the blurb, I was expecting a lot more action and a LOT less angst, and I was thus disappointed.
I don't know if I'll continue the series or not, but if I do, I will be reading it instead of listening to the audiobook, just in case my issue was the narrator leaning into the whining that turned me off this one.