Review

The D’Artigo sisters are operatives working for the Otherworld Intelligence Agency. Each of the sisters has her own special talents and gifts. Camille (our protagonist) has three husbands – Trillian, Smoky, and Morio. One of them, dragon Smoky, has a father who’s none-too-pleased with Camille and kidnaps her to his Dragon Reaches. The question is – can Camille survive long enough to escape before the father breaks her, body and spirit? Well, I never got the chance to find out because this book was absolutely too hard for me to struggle through, and I set it down half way to the finish.

This book is the tenth in the Sisters of the Moon series, and it was very clear from the first page that if you hadn’t read the first nine books you wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. And so it went – terminology I didn’t know, people and places that were unfamiliar to me, customs, cultures, and events referenced that I knew nothing about. This book is definitely not a stand-alone. It was very confusing and difficult to read.

However, even if I had been following this series from the beginning there would be a few things that would have lowered this book in my esteem anyway. The story read like a series of disjointed vignettes stapled together. There was no flow, no underlying connection between the scenes – instead each scene was like opening a new box of confusing ideas and relationships that had nothing to do with the last. Furthermore, the way the author writes was halting. The syntax was strange and awkward, and I found the sentences jarring. The sentences pulled me out of the book with their unnaturalness, instead of flowing smoothly. Finally, the characters were unlikeable. I found it hard to understand their motives, thoughts, and ideals. I didn’t understand them, found them lacking in any real depth, and therefore was unable to connect with them – adding to my frustration.

All in all, I didn’t enjoy the characters, the plot, or the prose enough to keep reading. While long-time fans of the series may enjoy this book, I would recommend others to skip this one and read something else.

Reviewed by Rose May