Astrid Hawk

I wish I had liked this more than I did. Maybe it would have been better reading with my eyeballs rather than my ears - although Michael Kramer's deep bass dragon voices were fantastic. The book felt about 2-3x longer than it needed to be, and unfortunately I found myself getting bored.

It is evenly paced, rather predictably switching between 2 characters (Kullen and Natisse) with action/fight scene for 1, action/fight scene for another, then recovery/conversation scene for each. But by the time I was 75% through the book, I started feeling like all the fight scenes were kind of the same. Natisse and Kullen fight with different styles and different weapons, but it was just one scrap after another with lash blade retracted or not, smoke/gas bombs, dragonblood surges, torn clothing, blades in eyeballs, blood spraying, blood in clothing, rolling, dodging, not quite dodging, more smoke, more blood, even more smoke, even more blood... but for the most part the fights didn't actually get us anywhere in the story. I noticed I had a tendency to tune out for short periods during the fight scenes, paying attention to whatever was going on around me in the real world, and then coming back in without really missing anything except maybe some of the nuances of the dodging.

The world-building was good, but despite the length of the book, there were still plenty of explanations saved for the next in the series (or after). A lot of the history of the various peoples in the world, for example. Through Kullen we learn a lot about dragon bonds, but neither of the main characters is capable of explaining the magic users, and neither knows a ton about the Orkans either. It's crazy that we had so many references to those peoples over about 18 hours of content, but in the end never answered any real questions.

I also found it hard to actually care about any of the characters. They spend so much time fighting and recovering and being on their own that you don't truly see them forming meaningful bonds with other humans. Both of the narrator characters have tragic pasts that are supposed to help you feel for them, but those pasts are explained in short bursts and mostly just seemed to add up to a thirst for vengeance. Natisse has a whole band of friends she runs with, but aside from a few bouts of despair and self-pity, I just didn't feel like she has real deep connections with them. Perhaps these authors just aren't great at writing real human bonds. Regardless, they clearly focused where they felt most confident - in the action.