Under an Azure Sky — Elysia Dayne
Under an Azure Sky — Elysia Dayne
Ratings1
Average rating3
This is Elysia Dayne book 1. The author very nicely sent me an audio code for review. I think the narration done by Rhonda Pownall was very good. The characterizations she brought to life were enjoyable.
I have to be honest, this book is kind of chaotic, but I did enjoy it. Elysia faces hardship after hardship in life, a fact that makes her turn out rather...hard. Tough, but also maybe a little stubborn too. She's known for being a dragon slayer, a monster killer, but for the most part, the reader doesn't get very much of that. She rescues a princess, which then becomes a kind of enemies to lovers-ish trope. It wasn't that they weren't enjoyable together, it was just never outwardly started, and then in the end it's a very big deal as if it was official.
This novel features both past sequences and present ones. And it's not that I'm against chapters of varying lengths, but there were some that legitimately only lasted 8-11 minutes, while others were up to an hour+. It made it hard to follow, the past bled into the present story, and although Elysia, the main character, goes from age 13 to that of an adult (I think?) she's written entirely the same throughout, adding to the confusion. Perhaps more chapters to break things up, with additional time switches, would have really aided the pacing.
What I particularly enjoyed were the little tidbits throughout. The tiny glimpses of world the reader is given. At one point there is a parasitic, proboscis-having dragon leech-thing that gets mentioned because the proboscis is harvested to penetrate dragon hide like a needle. Super crazy, minute detail, but that's where this writing shone for me. The action is heavy and vicious as well, I'm pretty sure everyone ever is dead.
Personally a 3/5* for me. But I would like to petition the word “suckle” in all forms be removed from the English language.