Ratings2
Average rating4.5
Tauran Darrica has been retired from the Valreus Sky Guard for four years following the Battle of the Broken Wings that resulted in the death of his dragon. Now, all Tauran wants to do is spend his days forgetting the past and gambling his way to an unsteady income. So when his old general from the Sky Guard hunts Tauran down to request his help with staving off the increasingly aggressive wild dragon population, Tauran refuses. But a fire ruins his rented room and leaves him without a place to stay, and Tauran finds himself on the road to Valreus, after all. Tauran is determined to stay as far away from dragons as he can get, but a starry-eyed young man from Sharoani, land of the wild dragons, might just ruin his plans. Kalai Ro-Ani has spent his life watching the stars, knowing he could never reach them.With his wild dragon Arrow, he sets out for the city of Valreus in the hope of building himself a better future than he could have stuck at the foot of the Kel Visal dragon temples. But nobody told Kalai that only the Sky Guard is allowed to own dragons, so when Arrow kills a guard in Kalai's defense, it looks like his adventure might be over before it can begin. But a chance encounter at the old Valreus archive offers Kalai the future he'd been hoping for. In the span of a single day, he has a home, a job, and a purpose. In Valreus, something much bigger falls into his lap - along with a tall and striking Valrean man with a rather strange disposition. A new LGBT+ fantasy story from Zaya Feli, featuring dragons, aerial battles and epic journeys through dangerous wilderness.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm not huge on high fantasy so I was a bit hesitant to read this book but I'm so glad I gave it a chance. Feli writes this fantasy world in a way that feels very realistic and the only real fantasy element are the existence of dragons. All of the characters feel multi-dimensional and very thought out. Though the book is over 500 pages, it's paced very well both in the romance as well as the world building and I wouldn't have minded another 500 pages when it was over.
I was impressed with the writing because Feli is Danish with English as a second language and yet you'd never be able to tell. There were some editing issues, like a repetition of phrases in a few parts (“collapsed like a stack of cards” used twice in the same scene) but it's not something that takes away from the quality of the story. I'm excited to read more of Feli's books.