On the book cover, Harry looks pretty geeky, but he's in fact brave and wily, a very lovable young hero. Sometimes the fantasy world an author created feels so real and immediate that you can almost step into it and become a street urchin running along the cobbled streets, keeping company with the heroine. She got the love story exactly right too. Some authors use romance as chocolate icing on cake, but the stuff she concocts here is close to flourless chocolate brownie, without the calory count. I admire the ease with which the author juggled the alter-ego and love that sassy baby dragon Karl rescued.
Villains can make or break a movie, and the same rule applies to books.
The half mechanical snakes is another nice touch. Can't think of the last time I read about as appealing a hero as Miles Vorkosigan. Kowtows to Lois McMaster Bujold, who has written about eight books in this series and is still going on strong. It took me a while to get into Steven Brust's Jhereg world, with all those exotic animal names in the Cycle, but once he introduced the protagonist's lovely wife, a fellow assasin, I was sucked into the story quickly. Have only read Jhereg and Yendi yet, but am hesitant to try the later, darker titles.