Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The author writes fairly well, and makes excellent use of her broad vocabulary without causing the narrative to feel clunky. However, I lost interest before the end of the second book. I downloaded this set expecting to find a fantasy trilogy, but was disappointed to find that this is far more romance than anything else. As fantasy, it's shallow, underdeveloped, and vague. The world, the magical system, and its complexities are never really explored; instead, pages are devoted to the leads exploring each others' bodies. You might get through these books if you like romance, but the constant and painfully contrived plot twists to throw the main characters into adventure after wild adventure to deepen their passions, as well as the ever-present starry-eyed mooning of each lead for their romantic counterpart, slowly started to drive me insane. Perhaps what irritates me most -- and is generally the hallmark of bad fantasy -- is the ambiguous magic system. Two books in, I still have no idea what is within the power of those with dragon blood. The best I can figure is that it's some strange matter generation/telekinesis/telepathy conglomerate. Which, as you might guess, causes magic users to be uninteresting and pointlessly overpowered, and magic itself to be generic phlebotinum that drives the plot. The characters themselves are charming and witty, and the author is great at writing fairly charismatic female leads, but there's not much variance; Zirkander, Sardelle, Jaxi, Cas, and Tolomek all have the same sense of humor and feel like the same person. While Ms. Buroker has a good grasp of prose and narration itself, the plots and characterization are severely lacking. If the author maps out her worlds with significantly more detail, works on diversifying her characters, and lightens up on the heavy romance angle, she could be a wonderful fantasy writer. As it is, I won't be continuing this series.