Author: Eileen Wilks
Series: A Novel of the Lupi (Book 14)
Publication: Berkley (January 2, 2018)
Description: The battle against a vengeful goddess reaches a climactic point as Lily Yu must now face the ultimate challenge in a dangerous new realm—without her husband, Rule …
When a mission to rescue five children stolen by an Old One falls apart under the assault of a demon prince, Lily wakes up in a strange reality—and is immediately taken captive by the dragon spawn who rule there. Jumping worlds has fractured her party, and Cynna is her only companion.
Although the clock is ticking, time works differently, and Lily has miraculously gained a week. That means seven days to free herself, find Rule and the others, rescue the children, and make it home alive. All before the dragon spawn holding her hostage trade her to the Old One. It would almost be doable if this weren’t Lóng Jia—also known as Dragonhome: the birthplace of dragons.
My Thoughts: Lily Yu, along with Rule, Cynna, Grandmother, and Gan, find themselves in Long Jia, the fabled Dragonhome, on their quest to rescue the missing Lupi children. The missing children include Rule's son Toby and Cynna's daughter Ryder. Of course, they are also trying to defeat the Great Bitch and it looks like the dragon spawn on Dragonhome have made some sort of deal with her.
They are taken from Dis to Long Jia by Gan who doesn't manage to keep them all together. Cynna and Lily end up in the capitol city which is ruled by dragon spawn. Grandmother, Rule and Gan appear far from the city and need to make their way to it to rejoin the others. Making things more difficult is that Rule is badly injured. We do learn more about Grandmother's abilities and past as she attempts to heal him.
While Grandmother, Rule, and Gan are making their way to the capitol, Lily is being interrogated by one of the dragon spawn. Since he, like all the dragon spawn, is a sociopath, his interrogation techniques are akin to torture. Between sessions which have Lily discussing abstract topics like altruism, faith, and belief, she and Cynna are trying to find a way out of their prison, a way to rescue the children, and a way to gate back to Earth.
When Gan brought them to Dragonhome, she brought them some time before the children were actually kidnapped which does give our heroes some time to come up with a plan to rescue them. Lily does find out why the children were taken and what is planned for them which makes their rescue even more vital.
I liked the setting of Dragonhome which has been colonized by Chinese who essentially fell through a gate from Earth. I liked learning more about the history of the dragons. I liked learning more about Grandmother. The story was filled with action.
While this would not be a good place to start this series since its events follow so closely and are dependent on the events of Dragon Spawn, it is a great episode for long-time fans of the series. This book is not a cliffhanger in that the main plot of this book - rescuing the children - is mostly concluded but the ending leads the way for the next book in the series.
Fans of urban fantasy and dragons will enjoy this long-running series.
Favorite Quote:
People feared choice. With it marched change, and people feared change more than either death or taxes. Easier to do things the way they had always been done. Easier, even, to surrender choice, let others make the decisions, and complain when things went wrong. Easier, for many, to assert that God was in charge, so everything must turn out all right in the end, no matter how bad things looked.I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.
Eh! Did people not understand the vastness they called God reached into this world only through them? That choosing to do nothing when evil walked among them gave God no way to act?
This is another series I eyed briefly. I have taken a recent interest in dragons. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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