Fury of Fire: Dragonfury, Book 1

Great narration. I like to list this first as it can make or break a story.

Loved this story. Easy listerning and very entertaining. Will be impatiently waiting for any new books in audio from this author.

I really enjoy it when readers with similar reading interests list their favourite authors and series. It really helps me find new authors too follow. Mine are Charlaine Harris, Jeaniene Frost, Jennifer Estep, Faith Hunter, Molly Harper, Ilona Andrews, Kresley Cole, Deborah Harkness, Nalini Singh, Coreene Callahan and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Happy Reading

This was a really good book. I liked the idea and the plot behind it. I will admit that Myst (the female lead) drove me insane with her reactions to things and through most of the book I wanted to smack her upside of the head. But there other points I wanted to address. Some of the reviews on here are saying this is another BDB and a rip on JR Ward. JR Ward isn't the only person to write fantasy/paranormal romance books nor is she by far the best. This has nothing to do with Vampires and to compare the two books and authors are like comparing oranges with apples.

People that are hardcore BDB and think the world revolves around all things BDB and Ward will tell you that this book is not worth it, I disagree. I like the idea of half human/half dragons. The guys in the book are interesting and intriguing. The action is good but it does have some slow points, especially with Ivar and the lab stuff but have a feeling that will pick up in the next book.

If you are looking for a new type of book to read but want to stay in the para/fantasy romance world that I recommend this book.

Too much modern slang for my tastes, and the leading lady was annoying at times. I truly will never understand why all of these beautiful single women abducted by stunningly gorgeous supernatural males are so determined to go back to their mundane lives. I'm happily married and I'd be hard pressed to deny Bastian, even with the whole I-need-to-impregnate-you-with-my-killer-dragon thing he has going on.

But I digress. If you're bored and or not yet jaded, it's ten bucks. Get it, keep your expectations low, and it's actually not too bad. I'll probably even read the second one.

I can see how this book would be a good listen for someone who's never read JR Ward before, but as a huge fan of hers, this book honestly disappointed me. The writing style has a very strong resemblance to Ms. Ward's, not to mention some of the character's and
similarities in dialogue. Some of the terms and phrases used are very popular in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and it felt like I was listening to a watered down version of it.

That being said, I did enjoy the plot, but when it comes to this kind of novel, I'll stick to the Master- JR Ward's done it already, and done it right.

The word choice was truly awful. There was a vast quantity of profanity that became distracting, along with some odd use of words that was repeated so many times as to be annoying. Like,

The story itself was interesting, and that was the only reason I kept listening. I wanted to find out how she resolved the problems she posed. I thought her premise had amazing potential. In the end she didn't even show that the heroine survived the birth; although, one assumes she did. I suppose she left room for, God help us all, a sequel.

The narrator did as well as could be expected from such abysmal material, but if he'd scaled back the tone of breathless panic substantially it would have improved.

It was okay, I almost didn't finish it and after listening the story leaves you hanging. The actual story had good premises, it wasn't boring and it picks up at the end. What I hated was it had very bad character development, this was a turn off for me. The men were all abusive and had a built in ability to roofie women into having sex with them and make them forget what happened, which was not sexy. The main character was a jerk, he intentionally took Myst to breed with him knowing it would kill her, but at the same time didn't want the relationship to get personal. Well I think that is pretty personal for the person who is having the baby and expected to die. And all he could think about was himself not about her at all. He started to feel bad later, what a peach. He did get more tolerable towards the end. Myst drove me crazy because she was scared of him because he was bulling her but thought he did nice things for her, what I haven't figured out yet. What is wrong with women who let themselves get sucked into this kind of situation without sticking up for themselves. Although some culture colloquialisms are good the author went overboard with hers and it distracts from the story. I happened to buy the second installment on my kindle for only $1, so I think I will read it instead of listening to it, but I did not like Rikar at all in this story, so maybe it is a buck down the tube. Otherwise I would probably have passed on the next book. Narrator was mediocre at best. Despite this review I love shifter stories I recommend Thea Harrison, Suzanne Wright, Charlaine Harrison, Nalini Signh and Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Although the idea of the book was interesting, it was very poorly written. There was no suspense around the relationships - the inner dialog was simply stupid and far too revealing with no sense of tension, no real build up of affection, and no sense of the strength a woman would actually bring to a relationship. The book was clearly written by a female - which lent a certain creepiness to the male reading - but it read more like what a man would expect a woman to be thinking. This is unfortunate as I think the concept and worldview was interesting and had a lot of potential in the right hands.

Take more time with that inner dialog - this sounded like it was written in a month to hit all the requirements for a romance novel - so that the tension builds slowly - so that the reader actually wonders what will happen next.

Also - stop interrupting every thought with an "and." I imagine in the written book it looked something like "and ---" followed by a quote. That is certainly the way it sounded.

As I listened, I fbegan to feel there was something wrong with a male voice vocalizing the sex thoughts of a woman - at least the way this book was written. The author had a habit of interrupting a thought line with a conjunction ("and" or "but") which the reade would follow with a pause - after the fifteenth time it was like fingernails on a blackboard and just served to emphasize the writing.

Irritation. I quit halfway. I marked it as finished - I couldn't even listen to the whole final chapter to find out what happened.

I won't be buying anything else in the series.

I'm a huge dragon fan and when I ran out of typical dragon books to listen to, I tried the shapeshifting dragon in human body romance novel genre. I've now read books in three such series, but I think I have to rank this series at the bottom.

First, the author makes a lot of references to actual products, from beers to phones to shoes. This might be an attempt to make the story seem more real or relatable, but it seems more likely they were paid product placements and I found them a little jarring.

The story seemed to jump back and forth between heavy and often gory action scenes and romantic emotional scenes in a way that felt oddly forced, like the author was trying hard to interest the stereotypical action-oriented male and romantic-oriented female readers. Characters often seemed to go out of character a bit just to create various conflicts or situations that weren't entirely believable. In fact, the whole mythos of the story seemed contrived to create this artificial need for an all-male race of dragons to suck energy from human females while giving them incredible pleasure as if to provide an excuse for them to have a romance (or at least to have sex). But I will give the story points for not devolving into a series of too many inexplicable sex scenes like one of the other similar series I read. In fact, I think there's really only one explicit scene in the whole book, and a couple glossed-over scenes.

I think my main problem with the story was that Bastian (the main good-guy dragon man) was too powerful and faced too few actual challenges. He mysteriously won most battles with little obvious effort, seeming to majorly outclass his opponents for little obvious reason. VAGUE SPOILER ALERT: Even when the main villain in the series set up this big, supposedly cunning trap for Bastian, and even when Myst (the main female human love interest) found out about the trap, she never tried to warn Bastian (which made no sense at all) and Bastian avoided the trap simply by spotting it a little before it sprung and asking one of his buddies to thwart it, which they did easily. Huh? Basically the final battle scene felt like an old Gi Joe episode where they're flying through a cloud of bullets and never getting hit while easily taking out waves of enemies for no apparent reason.
END SPOILER ALERT

If you like dragons, at least you get a fairly good dose of them in this book, but they rarely felt like dragons. They felt like humans fighting in dragon bodies or even fighting in jet planes (yes, dragons were described as "going supersonic" a number of times, I guess with the aid of magic). The dragons sometimes even fought like humans, using a punch where a bite or a breath weapon would have made more sense. You also get a large dose of enemy dragons getting fairly graphically brutalized, so if that bugs you, stay away.

As to the love story between Bastian and Myst, it was decent. Kind of contrived. The only real reason she had to fall for him was a mysterious energy attraction thing and the way he was so strong and protective of her. I guess some women really go for that. But I did find both characters to be likable and interesting, so I did enjoy seeing them get together in the end (as if that wasn't inevitable in this kind of book). Rykar and Angela (a second love interest obviously set up to be the central theme of the second book) were also likable characters. However, the end of the book played out pretty much as I predicted it would, which is never a good thing. I'd much rather be surprised.

Oh, and my wife found the pacing/tone at which the narrator read the story to be kind of annoying and found his voice acting to be a bit unemotional in areas that required emotion. I actually thought the tone of the narrator went with the almost military style of the action scenes, but it was a little unusual for the non action scenes. The most noticeable odd thing was he would say "Blah blah blah and..." and then pause before continuing the rest of the sentence. I actually didn't mind that aspect of the reading and... sometimes it even helped build suspense.

Recently I have had a thing for dragon shifter stories, mostly because I think of myself as a dragon woman, especially when I get angry. So I look forward to adding new dragon and dragon stories to my TBR list. I came across this one and thought I would give it a shot.

When the story starts out, Myst Munroe, a regular lady working as a nurse, comes across a bad situation where a pregnant lady lays dying. Try as she might, she is unable to save the mother, but is able to save the child. Enter the dragon! Before Myst is able to get away from the situation, her and two paramedics are attacked … by dragons! Sounds great right? So much potential in such a great start.

There were many things I liked about the story. The fight scenes between the different dragon factions were pretty awesome. The different abilities of the dragons were pretty cool too. I wasn’t too keen on the fact they couldn’t go out during the daytime, but each author has to make their dragons unique, so it was okay.

There were a few things that just didn’t sit well with me. For example, if you have a dragon lair that you can only enter by a cave entrance behind a waterfall and a ‘force field’ that makes it so you cannot sneak in. What the heck was with the cars and driveway when Myst needed to escape?????

I will probably read the next in the series just to see if Ms. Callahan will let our dragons soar or if they will be shot down in flames.

The Narration Review
This audiobook was narrated by Benjamin L. Darcie and I really enjoyed his narration. His voice was clear and his character voices were easily distinguishable. When it came to the more steamy scenes, Benjamin’s voice and tone rose and fell with the perfect tempo making me hang on every word.

I really liked the idea with the half dragons, I thought that rather original, but unfortunately I was disappointed. The characters were very briefly described and I couldn't really connect with them or the story. The narration was ok though.