People Fear What They Don’t Understand

I read this book because of Ellesfena‘s descriptive, intriguing review. Seraphina takes place in a world where dragons live in the world with humans, and they can transform to look human for their comfort. In Goredd, a peace treaty has been negotiated with the dragons, which is about to celebrate a 40 year anniversary. The world is medieval in nature with the clothes, and court, and everyone is very religious (there are many Saints.), but it also seems less sexist. The Queen is a powerful woman and her granddaughter, while very extroverted and lively, isn’t an airhead.

This is who I pictured when I read the description of the Captain of the Guard/love interest (ish)/son of the Crown Prince of Goredd, Rufus (who is dead with his head missing in a manner suggesting a dragon chomped it off.)

Lucian Kiggs was also smart and charming, and willing to overlook a few tiny lies (okay, many lies) from the heroine…. I admit I struggled to get into the book when it started jumping back to the past. I think I was in the middle of too much and just couldn’t give all the detail the attention it deserved. But then as the book started picking up steam I went back and reread the beginning and really liked it all. There are ideas about the dragons that the author lays the foundation for but doesn’t explore, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Oh, also music plays a big part of the story. Seraphina is the musician’s assistant to the court musician. Every ceremony and ball and official occasion seems to have music, so this is quite the honor. I will just post a theory here now so I can come back and see if I’m correct: I think that dragons are fully capable of having emotions, they’ve just shoved them aside for so long they’ve forgotten how. So many of them get lobotomized for showing emotions. It was an excellent, very creative book, and I look forward to reading the next one.