Saturday, January 31, 2009

"Up In Smoke"

Book Two of 2009 100+ Challenge

I've finished my second book of the year. I'm really off to a slow start, but we'll see how things go as time goes on. This book was the second in Katie MacAlister's Silver Dragon series. "Up in Smoke" follows the adventures of May Northcott who is the mate to the wyvern of the Silver Dragons, Gabriel Tauhou. She is also a doppelganger and is bound to a demon prince by the name of Magoth who, as the book begins, is arranging to make her his consort so he can have access to the mortal world so he can wreak havoc.

Along the way May needs to help her twin, Cyrene, regain her naiad status from Neptune. The story also includes some of the plottings and politics of the Dragon community, and Aisling and Drake, from the Green Dragon series, are in the book, but only as very secondary characters.

The story has many plots and numerous situations that in the end never get resolved. I enjoyed the book, but I wouldn't recommend it without first reading the books that came before, especially the Aisling Grey series. There is a lot of detail that isn't included in this book that you can get from the previous releases. Additionally, I'd wait to read this one until the next is out. It felt like the book ended before the story. The situation with Magoth isn't resolved, nor is the problem of May being the dragon shard vessel. We still don't really know who the dragon in the shadow world is or why he's there, and the wyvern of the Blue dragons is still up in the air. The only thing confirmed in this book is that May and Gabriel love each other.