Talon by Julie Kagawa Review

ISBN:9780373211395
October 28, 2015
Amazon Link

 Ember and Dante Hill are rare twin dragon hatchlings. Taught and bred to survive they learn to blend in with the human race. Stationed in Crescent Beach CA, the two dragons are trained to kill and to hunt the dragon slayers known as The Order of St. George.  Little do they know the soldiers are right under their nose.

 Lately I've been reading quite a few Dragon books and I came to realize I prefer it over Witches. I can't remember the last Witch Book I read but I can recall the last three Dragon books from last year alone. Maybe it’s because there aren’t a lot of Dragon books to choose from but the plot has been pretty easy to remember when I think about the titles. Talon didn't stick out as much as the other Dragon novels I have read but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. 

Talon is my first read from author Julie Kagawa. I actually own all her books I just never got around to reading them. After reading Talon that will change very soon. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about her Fae and Vampire series. It’s obvious Kagawa's writing style is very imaginative and even though the plot for Talon couldn't hold my interest for long periods of time, I was always thinking about plot and I wanted to finish it. I actually didn't want to DNF because I was curious in the direction and thought it would include more action scenes for a 400 page book.  

Since the story was told in multiple points of view, I found Talon to be very predictable which is why I couldn't read it for more than 45 minutes at a time.  I would have liked more dragon lore and maybe a murder in the first half. The romance overtook the majority of the book and was unconvincing majority of the time. This book was 200 pages too long since over 300 pages were from the romance.   

I'd have to say my biggest complaint about this book is the fact that Ember is too nice for a dragon. How is it that all the other dragons including her brother have a cruel manor about them and Ember is the nicest dragon there? And of course she's picked as the reliable one. As a reader I wish we saw an emotional struggle she faced to fit in with the human crowd. And as the story would progress we would see her break down and become a nice person. 

After staring at this cover for months waiting to be released, I was kind of hoping this had Asian dragon/zodiac folklore, sadly I was mistaken.

I didn't realize this was going to be a six book series. I only have a handful of 5-books-or-more-in-a-series under my belt but I will definitely give the next couple of books a try.

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