{"id":1958,"date":"2015-11-07T16:14:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T16:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/?p=1958"},"modified":"2015-11-07T16:14:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T16:14:39","slug":"fantasy-review-dragons-bride-by-h-l-burke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/2015\/11\/fantasy-review-dragons-bride-by-h-l-burke\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy review: ‘Dragon’s Bride’ by H L Burke"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s always a sad moment, reaching the end of a series and waving farewell to favourite characters. Will the author produce a final triumphant flourish, or will it fall a bit flat? Will obstacles be swept aside too easily, or will everything make perfect sense? Fortunately, the author got pretty much everything right in this. Ewan and Shannon\u2019s story was tied up in a very satisfactory way, bad guys got their comeuppance, good guys got their reward and even the time travel worked out very neatly.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with Ewan and Shannon. I was always very pleased that Ewan embraced his dragon-ness, and Shannon was cool with it, too, even as they both had good reasons for wanting him to be human again. It seemed likely to me that the end of the story would have to be bittersweet, with one or both of them having to make a sacrifice. But the author cleverly produced an ending that satisfied on every level. I can\u2019t say more than that without giving things away, but I loved the final resolution. Perfect.<\/p>\n

The sub-plots were less interesting to me. Ryan\u2019s chase round to find his son felt suspiciously like filler, Shannon\u2019s pregnancy issues likewise, and Acacia and Will seemed to be there solely as plot devices. The resolution of Riley, in particular, felt very contrived, and the rebellion never really rose to the occasion. In the end, I\u2019d have traded most of this for more time with Ewan and Martin.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tricky to do time travel plots without getting tied in knots or leaving plot holes big enough for a dragon to fly through. There were some nice twists here that took me by surprise, but it all fell into place very logically. The fae were well-drawn, but I did find their magical powers a bit arm-wavingly convenient at times. How shall we get out of this particularly desperate mess? Oh, look, here\u2019s someone with the power to just poof! make it all go away.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, this story was all about Ewan and Shannon, and the resolution of it was note perfect, although the sub-plot niggles keep it to four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s always a sad moment, reaching the end of a series and waving farewell to favourite characters. Will the author produce a final triumphant flourish, or will it fall a bit flat? Will obstacles be swept aside too easily, or will everything make perfect sense? Fortunately, the author got pretty much everything right in this. Ewan and Shannon\u2019s story was tied up in a very satisfactory way, bad guys got their comeuppance, good guys got their reward and even the time travel worked out very neatly. Let\u2019s start with Ewan and Shannon. I was always very pleased that Ewan embraced his dragon-ness, and Shannon was cool with it, too, even as they both had good reasons for wanting him to be human again. It seemed likely to me that the end of the story would have to be bittersweet, with one or both of them having to make a sacrifice. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63],"tags":[129],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}