Of Swords and Parasols

This is the third of Abe’s Drakon books, and there’s at least one more after it. The first book in the series is pretty clearly the beginning of a series, but is pretty standalone, while the second sets the stage for the meta-arc, which kicks off here.

The drakon (people descended from dragons, which gives them certain abilities, including, for a few, the ability to become a dragon) of Darkfirth have lived in isolation in England for centuries, just another town that most have never been to. For years, their current Alpha, Kimber, has been corresponding with Maricara, princess of a clan of drakon in Transylvania that they never knew existed until she began the correspondence. Maticara’s younger brother is officially the head of their clan, but everyone knows it’s really Maricara who’s in charge. When two drakon are killed, Maricara easily identifies them as spies of Kimber’s, and quickly realizes that there’s a serial killer targeting drakon, and that the killer has most likely learned about Darkfirth, so she decides to go to England to warn them, and to finally meet Kimber face-to-face.

Kimber has also been wanting to meet Maricara for years, and his clan has been planning to eventually invade and combine the two clans for just as long. Kimber and Maricara are also both Alphas, and so it’s automatically expected that they should marry. I can understand the biological imperative involved in mating your most powerful members, especially when that means your clan has someone who can become a flying, armored, 30-foot-long creature that breathes fire. Useful to have around. Unfortunately, Kimber, and the rest of Darkfirth, doesn’t really bother to ask, and just assumes. Similarly, no one ever thinks to actually go to Transylvania to talk to Maricara and her brother about combining forces and forging treaties. The men who rule Darkfirth are pretty much privileged losers.

Shana Abe, IMO, writes some of the best heroines in the genre (and has pretty interesting plots), and Maricara is no exception. She’s confident efficient, and smarter, cleverer, and more skilled than anyone else in the book, and in a believable way. Unfortunately, Abe still likes to pair her heroines with controlling alpha males, and while Kimber is far from the worst (that would be his father) he’s still frustrating. After Dream Thief I had hoped that Abe was getting past that, but I guess not. Though, really, he isn’t nearly as bad as some others. There’d be hope for him if he didn’t have abandonment issues and a dozen men pressuring him to be an alpha jerk. Thankfully, the next book appears to be about his brother, Rhys, and the girl Rhys had a crush on when hormones arrived (Abe loves her unrequited childhood crushes, and so do I), and Rhys didn’t seem to be very alpha here.

I hope that, after the last book in the series, Abe returns to medievals, as I think her plots and characters work better in that setting.

I’m starting to notice a trend in Shana Abe’s romances. The hero and heroine will have known each other or been betrothed since childhood. At some point, the heroine will go off and have to survive the world on her own, becoming strong and independent along the way, and then the hero will show up to “claim” her, much to her objections.

Kit Langford and Clarissa Rue Hawthorne are both children of a tribe of drakon-people who can turn into dragons or smoke, Kit is the male Alpha, the head of the clan. It’s been generations since there has been a female alpha to survive the Turn that gives them their abilities. Rue is a half-breed who has always been looked down on by the tribe, and when she survives the Turn on her 17th birthday, she fakes her death to escape being married to him.

Years later, she’s living in London as a cat burglar, complete with some secret identities. When the tribe realizes that only one of their own could be pulling off the heists, they send Kit to London to draw the thief out, using their own jewels to draw the thief out. While Rue is too smart to fall for that, someone else isn’t, and when Kit finds her, she ends up getting blamed, even as Kit and the rest of the tribe declare that, as a female Alpha, she has to marry Kit.

Despite the fact that it relies on a Big Misunderstanding, I like the overall plot, and I adore Rue. Kit…well, to be fair, Abe’s alpha male heroes aren’t as bad as many of them in romantic fiction are, but at the same time, most heroines haven’t struggled as long and hard to have their own, independent lives as her heroines have. Kit talks about how he likes her being so fierce and independent, but spends most of his time blackmailing her and telling her how she has no choice but to be his wife. Great way to both show and earn respect, there.

Like the other Abe books I’ve read, I’m happy with it overall, I just wish the hero wasn’t so alpha and determined to take her freedom from her, or at least that I was really convinced that he respected her.

When she was fifteen, Amiranth was wed to Tristan, a knight she’d adored from afar for years, but never actually spoken to. On their wedding night, he spoke another woman’s name, and a week later, he left her waiting for him at a small country estate while he ran off to the crusades. She didn’t exactly remain smitten for long.