Long ago, dragons were hunted to near extinction by the Order of St. George, a legendary society of dragon slayers. Hiding in human form and growing their numbers in secret, the dragons of Talon have become strong and cunning, and they're positioned to take over the world with humans none the wiser.
Ember and Dante Hill are the only sister and brother known to dragonkind. Trained to infiltrate society, Ember wants to live the teen experience and enjoy a summer of freedom before taking her destined place in Talon. But destiny is a matter of perspective, and a rogue dragon will soon challenge everything Ember has been taught. As Ember struggles to accept her future, she and her brother are hunted by the Order of St. George.
Soldier Garret Xavier Sebastian has a mission to seek and destroy all dragons, and Talon's newest recruits in particular. But he cannot kill unless he is certain he has found his prey: and nothing is certain about Ember Hill. Faced with Ember's bravery, confidence and all-too-human desires, Garret begins to question everything that the Order has ingrained in him: and what he might be willing to give up to find the truth about dragons.
“Rnesh karr slithis," I hissed back, which was Draconic for eat your own tail, the dragon version of go screw yourself. No extra translation needed.”
First of all, this book is about dragons. My favorite mythical creature in the entire world. So of course I was going to immediately want to jump on this book.
This book had an interesting premise, although it may seem a little cliche. Dragons have been hunted down by this sect of human hunters called the Order of St. George for centuries, pretty much to the point of extinction. It makes sense since we haven't seen or heard of dragons outside of fairy tales. There's no way that dragons are actually real, actually out there in the world, or else we would have seen them already right? According to this book, it is because dragons have the ability to shift into humans and blend in without us even realizing it.
In this story, we meet an anomaly in the dragon world, a hatchling that is actually a twin, something that is completely unheard of. According to everything that Ember and Dante Hill know, they are the only two twin dragons in existence, and they have never been apart. They have spent their entire lives being trained by Talon, the dragon organization that is dedicated to making sure that their dragons are able to survive, and whatever else they are supposed to in the world. Right now, it didn't seem like the real objective of Talon is obvious, and this is something that Ember will have to learn throughout her journey. After their summer is over, where they have a chance to learn how to assimilate with humans, the real training will begin.
One of the main ideals that Ember and Dante were taught is that while they need to learn how to blend in, they will always be better than the human species. They were not supposed to show any real human emotions because it got messy, and would get into the way of Talon's objectives for them. But as we can see with Ember, she has a lot more human tendencies than she anticipated to have. She wants to enjoy this sliver of freedom that Talon has allowed her to have in Crescent Beach, making human friends and learning how to surf among other things. So everything that she was taught seems to contradict what she's been experiencing.
Not only do we follow the summer of Ember Hill, but we also hear from one of the soldiers of the Order of St. George, dubbed The Perfect Soldier by his teammates, named Garret Xavier Sebastian. He grew up having his family killed by dragons, and indoctrinated into the mindset that all dragons were monsters that needed to be destroyed no matter what. They even knew that dragons could shift into humans, and that they were good at mimicking human behavior. For some reason, they even knew when a dragon was in the area and would be able to set up house at least a month in advance before they were even placed into human society. How were they getting their intel on where the dragons would be, and how would they know who the dragon would be?
From the moment that Ember and Garret met, their entire world will change, and everything that they thought they knew will be tested. There's moments of love and fear, heartache and betrayal, and all the human emotions that both Ember and Garret were forced to hide from themselves and others. All it really took was for them to bring it out of one another in a way that made them learn more about who they are as people, whether they are a human or a dragon.
I really rooted for Ember and Garret to be free to feel something other than what they were told to feel. I wanted both of them to have that teenage experience of enjoying themselves in the summer, having friends and learning how to love. I wanted them to be teenagers again, something that they haven't allowed themselves to be. It made me cheer for them when things were going well, and broke my heart when they were having issues being real with themselves. But throughout the entire book, all I could do was enjoy the ride and hope that things would get better all around. The ending absolutely killed me, and I need to get my hands on the entire saga as soon as possible.
Rated: 5/5 ★
The beast raged; it punctured the air with its spite. But the girl was fiercer.
Tea is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy makes her a bone witch, who are feared and ostracized in the kingdom. For theirs is a powerful, elemental magic that can reach beyond the boundaries of the living—and of the human.
Great power comes at a price, forcing Tea to leave her homeland to train under the guidance of an older, wiser bone witch. There, Tea puts all of her energy into becoming an asha, learning to control her elemental magic and those beasts who will submit by no other force. And Tea must be strong—stronger than she even believes possible. Because war is brewing in the eight kingdoms, war that will threaten the sovereignty of her homeland…and threaten the very survival of those she loves.
“Then perhaps we should carve a world one day where the strength lies in who you are, rather than in what they expect you to be.”
This is a world where the idea of being a witch is not so far-fetched or shunned upon as most would think. In fact, there are so many witches in this world that there are many different kinds, each one in charge of a specific element over another. And of course, there are always going to be some witches that are seen as "less than", even among them as a species. In this case, it is the necromancers, the bone witches, that are deemed as freaks and the witches that nobody wants to really get involved with.
That's the kind of witch that Tea ends up becoming, despite her sisters having control of the more calmer elements. It's not like she meant to raise her dear brother Fox from the dead, but she did it anyway, and that was the moment that changed everything.
Tea was set on a path to adventure, one where she had to learn very quickly about what it meant to be a bone witch, how to control her powers, and why so many people grew to fear those that ended up controlling the dead. From the young age of fourteen years old, Tea is whisked away from the comfort of her hometown, and with the help of another bone witch, an Asha named Lady Mykaela, she travels far to a land where she becomes one of the most powerful Asha alive, and all before she hits her eighteenth birthday.
This book is told in an interesting format, where not only do we get to hear Tea's side of the story when she first found out what she was, but we also get a sneak peek into what happened after all that, when she is no longer in a safe place with Lady Mykaela, and where she is one of the most feared women in the world. With power, the kind of power that Tea has, is bound to come those that fear those that have such power, and that's what happened to Tea. Did she deserve it? Was she really that scary that the time jump shows her in a place of exile from those she grew to love and care about? We won't know until the next book comes out, so I'm hoping that happens sometime soon.
It was very difficult for me to take the time to write down my thoughts for this book for the longest time. It even took me a while to read this book because there were moments where I wasn't really engaged. It was interesting, but there was something about it that made it such a weird book to get through. I loved Tea, don't get me wrong. I loved her story, I found her to be such a powerful girl at such a young age and she really grew into herself more than I could ever dream of, but I feel like the disconnect between when she was first learning how to be a bone witch and the bard's time with her in the present left a lot of holes to be filled in. There were times where the bard would touch upon a subject, and then the chapter following it would semi answer the question, but there is still so much of Tea's story to be told, and I can't wait to find out more of what exactly happened between the events of the past and the current timeline as it stands today.
Rated: 4/5 ★
Beauty knows the Beast’s forest in her bones—and in her blood. Though she grew up with the city’s highest aristocrats, far from her father’s old lodge, she knows that the forest holds secrets and that her father is the only hunter who’s ever come close to discovering them.
So when her father loses his fortune and moves Yeva and her sisters back to the outskirts of town, Yeva is secretly relieved. Out in the wilderness, there’s no pressure to make idle chatter with vapid baronessas…or to submit to marrying a wealthy gentleman. But Yeva’s father’s misfortune may have cost him his mind, and when he goes missing in the woods, Yeva sets her sights on one prey: the creature he’d been obsessively tracking just before his disappearance.
Deaf to her sisters’ protests, Yeva hunts this strange Beast back into his own territory—a cursed valley, a ruined castle, and a world of creatures that Yeva’s only heard about in fairy tales. A world that can bring her ruin or salvation. Who will survive: the Beauty, or the Beast?
“Fairy tales are about lessons. Those who are virtuous and true are rewarded, while those who are wicked and greedy are punished.”
This was one of the most amazing retellings of Beauty and the Beast that I've ever read. The premise that Beauty was the hunter, rather than the "damsel" in distress that has to deal with being a prisoner in an amazing castle. Forget what you know about the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, because this was nothing like it. In fact, I think the lack of musicals and talking furniture made the story better in my eyes.
According to the original story of Beauty and the Beast - the original French version that does not get enough credit - Beauty had two sisters that she needed to take care of. I have seen some versions where her sisters are not friendly, almost similar to Cinderella's ugly stepsisters and how they are cruel to her because of her beauty. In this case, she was responsible for making sure that her sisters had food to eat, and served as a second hunter after her father.
In the beginning of the story, they lived in the town and her family was rich as her father made a lot of money as a merchant. However, all that changed when he lost his entire fleet in a storm, essentially bringing them from riches to rags in a matter of seconds. They had to sell their belongings, and move to the cabin where they lost their mom. In a way, Yeva was glad to go back to her roots because she was always looking for something more, something different from the confines of the Baroness's social visits and dealing with the politics of the town. So when she had to go back to the cabin and have access to the woods she grew up in, going back to hunting which was what she loved, she was more than happy to leave. If it wasn't for her father's pain, it would have almost been a blessing.
But then something bad happened to her father, and she was hell-bent on revenge, leaving her sisters to fend for themselves while she was on the hunt for the creature that destroyed her rock. She had always heard stories about the Beast in the woods, the elusive creature that her father could never find no matter how many times he went out to search. He knew the area like the back of his hand, and yet there was no way that he could find it. So when Yeva's father did not come home, there was only one thing that she could do.
She had to kill the Beast.
One of the elements that I appreciated about this book was the fact that there was no typical love story between Yeva and the Beast. It was not forced, it wasn't something that seemed to come out of nowhere after being imprisoned in a castle for months at a time. It wasn't pushed along by the castle's inhabitants trying to convince her to let the Beast in, unlike Disney's animated version. She really wanted her revenge, she really wanted to kill the Beast and there was no way that she was going to allow herself to feel anything other than hatred for him, and that's how it went for the longest time.
Yeva was so strong, so steadfast in her resolve that she endured being alone, her family probably thinking that she was dead. And when she was forced to train based on orders from the Beast, she did everything in her power to make sure that she did well, that she trained harder and faster than she ever did before. She discovered that there was so much more to the woods than she thought, that in fact there was another world completely surrounding the one that she lived in, and it was there that she would be able to break the curse that would have her confined to being lonely. She was one of my favorite characters of any book that I've read and I'm so glad that despite everything that happened, she does end up getting a good ending.
Whether you like the Beast or not is up for debate, and his story is one that is not based on him being an ugly person inside, or treating people like they are trash. No, his backstory is one that goes back farther than any we've heard before, and is something mythical in its own right. Does it make you feel empathy for him? Does it make you wish that he was more like the Beast from the Disney animated version? It depends. But in all honesty, this was one of the stories that I will never forget, and one of the stories that will forever remain in my heart.
Rated: 5/5 ★
