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author, book reviews, book, books, characters, dragon books, fantasy, fiction, heartstrikers, literature, nice dragons finish last, nice dragons finish last by Rachel Aaron, novel, plot, Rachel Aaron, read, reader, review, science fiction, scifi, stories, story, urban fantasy, write, writer, writing
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Scifi, Dragons
Pages: 315
Point of View: Third (Julius)
Released: July 15th 2014
Series: Hellstrikers 1
Predictability: 3 out of 5 (Where 1 is totally unpredictable and 5 is I knew what was going to happen way ahead of time.)
Mood: Fun, light, action
Source: Bought
My Rating: 9/10 Stars
My Summary:
Unlike normal dragons, Julius likes humans and spends most of his time holed in his room. His mother’s fed up with him, so one day she has him woken up, sealed in human form, and dumped in a city where there’s a bounty on dragons. If he doesn’t prove himself a true dragon in a month, she’ll kill him.
Julius hires Marci, a young mage, to assist him, but she has problems of her own. She stole something from a mobster and he wants it back.
My Review:
This book has ALL of my weaknesses! Why didn’t I read it sooner?!
A futuristic fantasy! I love when SciFi and fantasy merge and it worked great here! After a comet hit years ago, magic was reawakened and now everyone knows about it. The reawakened spirits, mages, and dragons have reshaped our world. Most of this book takes place in the city of Detroit Free Zone, a city of spirits where its illegal to pollute the water, but pretty much everything except murder is legal. The rich live in high superscrapers and then there’s the ‘colorful’ underground. The magic system was simple, but well thought out. Technology and magic mesh together to create special phones and self driven cars. It was all so cool and well done!
My favorite aspect of course was the dragons and their culture. They’re truly cutthroat and highly magical and strong. (Julius still has his strength, even if he can’t turn into a dragon with the powers of fire and flight.) His mother has dozens of children. So many that she names each clutch by a letter of the alphabet to keep them straight. A is the oldest and she’s currently on J, making Julius one of the youngest at only 24.
Julius is a great protagonist! He’s spent his life bending to his family and feeling like a weak failure, since he’s a nice dragon. (Weakness no 1, the good monster hehe!) He really grew throughout this book and not only got tougher but accepted himself. Marci’s a doctoral student who believes in very structured magic. She’s been through a lot recently, but she’s smart and tough.
Both of the main characters are awkward so that made the romance cute. She also doesn’t know he’s a dragon. (Which I loved, the whole secret identity thing! And a forbidden romance!)
The Bad:
The only thing that kept this from a perfect book in my opinion is I wanted more humor, or maybe some banter.
There were also quite a few errors in my Kindle version. (But this is a self published book)
Will I read the next one? I already am!!
I tried to get my sister to read this, since dragons are her favorite, but apparently she doesn’t like human dragons. (Picky picky)
What’s your favorite fantasy creature? Dragons are high on my list (particularly human ones) but if mages count they’re probably number one and as overused as they are I still have a weakness for vampires.
Woven Magic Books 