This was a Christmas gift from my girlfriend, and on the day I was very impressed when I read the back and the first couple of pages.
The main character, Sarah is a ass-kicking blacksmith with an interest in martial arts and ren fairs, sounds pretty good. On top of this sheās gay and having a hard time coming to terms with her sexuality, awesome Iām always up for a good lesbian main character. AND thereās strong Norse mythological themes throughout, including dragons, giants, Valkyries and Odin himself? I was all in by this point. It was a fresh exciting premise, it had pretty much everything I wanted from a book, especially considering I hadnāt found something to really throw myself into for a while. It was probably by this point that I was expecting too much from it. In reality while the plot had great potential, Sarah pretty much ignored all the magic and fantasy around her until she had ruined both of her own jobs and broken up with her girlfriend, at which point it picked up and I actually got to see some action and plot development, but it felt like Sarah only went along with it begrudgingly because everything else in her life had gone to pot and she didnāt really have much else to do. Ā Ā Ā
One of my biggest qualms about this book is that whilst most of it is written in first person from Sarahās point of view, there are odd third person chapters thrown in from random characterās points of view. Her girlfriend for one has a couple of chapters, but the main culprit for this is the big bad dragon. I can kind of see what the author is going for with this, while it does give us extra information that we would otherwise be lacking if it were purely from Sarahās view, Ā if this was the author's intention, then perhaps the perspective should have been rethought and maybe the whole book be written in third person. These chapters make even less sense when we later figure out that the big bad dragon dude isn't actually the Big Badā¢ for this book after all. So maybe itās a ploy to set up for the next book, Iāve yet to read it so I don't know, but either way it felt clumsy and awkward.
My next issue is more of a personal one, although I feel many people will agree with me. Sarah is closeted, and throughout the book it is clear she is not quite fully comfortable with her sexuality, mostly this is a product of growing up in a ultra religious bigoted family, within the book she does come out to a few people although not usually voluntarily, more so out of necessity or accidentally. This is a source of contention between Sarah and her girlfriend and actually culminates when her girlfriend āaccidentallyā outs her to their entire friendship group after a sexy shower romp. Pressuring your girlfriend to come out, not cool.
Maybe I sound overly critical of this book, but that was only because I had really high expectations, it probably didnāt help that I knew this was written by a middle-age, straight dude and honestly there were moments when this really shone through. Perhaps if I had lowered my expectations I would have enjoyed it a little bit more.
