Review: Breath of fire
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2013
People who have dragon ancestry can interbreed with us and produce children who are more or less gifted with dragonish behaviours. As an Enforcer, gaining the role when her aunt flew off with her hoard, Rena Drake has seen the best and the worst of her kind. Ancient dragons eat human flesh, newer ones just meat. Now a group of renegade Draken is going around killing humans. Rena's job is to stop them from endangering her community.BREATH OF FIRE is required to make a Draken's body burn up. A female Draken was killed, and Rena has enough on her plate when an FBI agent shows up. Noah Ford is trying to understand the rash of killings. Rena is thought to be a psychic... she can erase memories. There is a lot of violence in this tale and Alasdair, clan ruler and Rena's father, is a source of some of it. Each clan is suspicious of the others and some Draken are using that to their advantage.My usual quibble with urban fantasy - that it starts off as adventure and quickly becomes hierarchies and who gives orders to whom - is realised again as Rena hears a lot of Draken history and gets ordered around. This slows down the adventure. Every time we meet another dragon things get crashed around and people get broken. Well, that's what you have to expect of dragons. We see that Draken like the colours red and gold; not all can take dragon shape; and they take longer to grow up than humans. Then Rena gets a lifemate, Julian, and her inner dragon begins to take over, including shapechanging, hoarding and mating behaviours. We wonder why Noah Ford was introduced as he's not in the picture now.Liliana Hart has written a lengthy absorbing fantasy read, with plenty of action - not all of it pleasant.