Light My Fire by G.A. Aiken (Dragon Kin, #7)
Paranormal romance released by Zebra Books on November 25, 2014
The trouble with humans is that they’re far too sensitive. Forget you put a woman in the local jail for a few months—and she takes it so personally! And yet she is the one trying to assassinate the queen. And now I’m trapped with Elina Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight . . . gods! That endless name!
But what am I to do? I am Celyn the Charming with direct orders from my queen to protect this unforgiving female.
Even more shocking, this unforgiving female is completely unimpressed by me. How is that even possible? But I know what I want and, for the moment, I want her. And I’m sure that she, like all females, will learn to adore me. How could she not when I am just so damn charming?
The trouble with humans is that they’re far too sensitive. Forget you put a woman in the local jail for a few months—and she takes it so personally! And yet she is the one trying to assassinate the queen. And now I’m trapped with Elina Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight . . . gods! That endless name!The August #TBRChallenge theme is Author with More Than One Book in TBR. I was late to reading G.A. Aiken’s Dragon Kin series and am drawing out my first read of the series with two more books in the series remaining on my to-read list. Light My Fire is a super satisfying read, exactly what I was looking for and expecting. The Southland Dragons are a trip and I greatly enjoy reading their antics. Celyn finally gets his romance and it’s with Elina, a new character to the series. I enjoyed their kind of hate-to-love romance.
This is a long-running series and a close family where couples from previous books feature heavily and some story arcs run throughout so I won’t be able to avoid spoiling prior books! Be warned!
Like all Shelly Laurenston/G.A. Aiken reads, in Light My Fire you get adventure, some romance, and a whole lot of dragon (or pack or pride or royal) family drama. It’s like a fabulous, at times super silly, fantastical soap opera. Light My Fire introduces the very-long-named Daughters of the Steppes. They’re a matriarchal society of warrior women and Elina, a Daughter of the Steppes, has no patience for Celyn when they meet and is immediately annoyed and angered by him and the other Southlanders. Celyn has his own issues with Elina but they start to bang it out on a road trip (of course). Celyn’s introduction to Elina’s people does not go well and brings out more feelings between them as they try to deal with what happens. We also meet Elina’s sister Kachka and I can’t wait to read more about her.
Lots of stuff happening in this story besides Celyn and Elina getting together. Annwyl and Fearghus’ kids show back up after they left home for more training as does Briec and Talaith’s daughter. They’re preparing for big happenings and have partnered with a big, bad scary believed-dead relative. We also meet Dagmar and Gwenvael’s children who are creepy but a hoot to read about. Never-ending family drama in this fantasy world and these ruthless, powerful dragons and humans who can conquer evil is just what I needed to read. It’s violent but I found it a bit cathartic looking around me at what I can’t fix in the real world.
Light My Fire has family and friend squabbles aplenty. Some of the name calling and sibling bullying got a bit much for me this read and I cringed at one of the grossly violent deaths (these are mythical creatures in a fake world so it doesn’t land as badly for me like it would if this was set in a more real world but still got old). While I didn’t mind it, there wasn’t much development of the romance between Celyn and Elina on the page—they fight, they bang, they get feelings in pretty rapid order. Also, this is a big family group and in this book you spend a lot of time bouncing between the different siblings and relatives who’ve had their own books. But again, worked for me just fine and this was a very satisfying read.
Grade: B
