Review: Love in the Time of Dragons by Katie MacAlister

Disclosure: This book was purchased by me, so the FTC can't say anything about my ethics. *raspberry* The book was read and reviewed while under the influence of serious cold medication, though, so be on the lookout for more than the usual ramblings.

Katie MacAlister's Dragon series is one of my absolute favorite paranormal series. And while I loved the Aisling Grey, Guardian series (featuring the green dragons), the Silver Dragons trilogy just didn't have the same spark. I picked up Love in the Time of Dragons anyway (Look at that cover, YUM) and was surprised to see it was a novel of the "Light Dragons."

Who?

Granted, it's been several months since I've read (or listened to the audio versions of) any of the Dragon series, but I could not remember a Light Dragon. So either I'd missed a major something or I'd just lost my mind.

Turns out I wasn't crazy after all *whew* The Light Dragon sept makes an appearance in this novel and feature two characters that we see but never really get to know in the Silver Dragon trilogy: Baltic and Ysolde.


 The book opens five weeks after the conclusion of Me and My Shadow. Tully Sullivan, apprentice to badass archimage Dr. Kostich wakes up from a "fugue" to discover she's lost over a month of time--during which she's been dreaming about a young girl from the middle ages. And she's being told that she IS this girl, a silver dragon named Ysolde. The problem is that she is human, not dragon.

Partly told in a recovered memory/flashback style, we see Baltic and Ysolde as they were in the late Middle Ages. Baltic as a warrior complete with armor, Ysolde as a mischievous young girl of seventeen.  Baltic is typical alpha male, angsty, brooding, intense. And while we watch his love for Ysolde grow in intensity, we also feel his sorrow that he cannot stop the war that has broken out between the Black Dragons and the Silver Dragons--essentially a sept created by Black Dragon defectors.

It may be sappy, but one reason I adored this book, besides the laugh out loud outrageousness, is that it shows in a very compelling way that love can last beyond death--that forever can truly be for eternity.

I admit to some confusion about the whole resurrection vs. reincarnated thing. (Probably due to the medication). I missed the details of just how these two dragons were brought back to life. The when, where, why and how actually. There are more books in the series coming, but the haziness did bother me.

I really earned some concerned stares from my family in the last few chapters due to some outright gaffaws I let loose. The sarkany (the Dragon equivalent of a UN Security Council Meeting) was downright hysterical. Watching these in-control, dictatorial dragons sit there aghast at the social nature and picnic atmosphere permeating the event while being utterly helpless to alter it was beyond funny. Plus, there were the bananas. Yeah, I said bananas.

So while some fuzziness remains for me on the details of how this new sept was born--and as is typical with Macalister's Dragon series the book does not tie up loose ends--I found this highly entertaining, sometimes touching, and often hysterical. I rarely put the book down and finished it in one day.

My Grade: A-