Reviewed by Vicki (Tori)

TITLE: Dragon Soldier 

SERIES: Supernatural Consultant #5

AUTHOR: Mell Eight

PUBLISHER: Less Than Three Press

LENGTH: 30,000 words

RELEASE DATE: March 8th, 2017

BLURB:

The aftermath of the last battle has left Nickel weak in bed and grounded for the next decade. Despite being in trouble, Nickel wants to return to the battle as soon as he can, but thoughts of Platinum, the dragon helping to nurse him back to health, keep distracting him.

Platinum can’t believe how much his life has changed. He went from being a lonely fugitive on the run to part of a family in only hours. The last few days have been his happiest, especially now that he’s met Nickel. He knows it’s only temporary, though. The enemy that kept him captive for most of his life isn’t finished with him yet, and even Platinum and Nickel’s combined powers might not be enough to save them.

REVIEW:

Mell Eight is a new author to me, and I just read this whole series back to back. I’ll give a brief description of the series before I talk about this book.

In the first book, Dragon Consultant, we meet Dane, the owner of Supernatural Consultants, and leader of a supernatural/paranormal region. He’s been asked to look in to a report of dragons harassing airplanes. He finds a sick adult dragon shifter, and a pack of assorted younger dragons hiding in the woods. He packs them up, and takes them home. Only to fall in love with Mercury, the adult dragon shifter, and help him raise the pack of orphan dragon kits. The story continues on through the series, Dane and Mercury and their kits, trying to discover who has been capturing dragons, in the egg, and as youngsters, and performing experiments on them. A couple of bad guys come and go, but they are always looking for the boss. They are also always looking for Platinum, a dragon they missed rescuing.

Now this fifth book in the series features Nickel, one of the older of the dragon kits, now a young man working for Dane’s firm, as he recovers from the ass whooping he received in the last book. Nickel made a bad decision, got roughed up pretty good, and has been confined to bed. The good thing that came out of the mess in the last book, was the discovery of Platinum, who has been reunited with his sister, and brought in to the fold. This is the story of Nickel and Platinum discovering love…. and the ultimate fight against the enemy they have spent ten years searching for.

I have enjoyed my week reading these books, I’m always up for a new shifter series, and I haven’t read many about dragon shifters. I’m fascinated with the creation of the world an author of paranormal books sets their characters in. They set the rules, and each seems to have their own system. Magic, shifting, lives, etc, are all unique to the author. This series had some great world building, and I loved the urban fantasy feel of it. This is our world, but with dragons and magic! How cool!

I liked Mercury and Dane as characters as I read the series, and I loved that they took in this group of orphaned young to raise as their own. We are shown lots of scenes of them caring for the kits, lots of dinners, lots of play time, and when bad shit goes down, one protects while the other fights. I loved all of that. But. Even having said that, I wish a little less time had been spent on the interaction with all of the kits. It got to be a bit much for me after a while. The other issue I have is that there IS NO SEX IN ANY OF THESE BOOKS! Dane and Mercury do get it on now and then, but it is all off page, or very brief. I didn’t think I’d miss it, but apparently I did!

This book has the same issues as I’ve had with the others. Too much time spent on the kits, and no sex. Nickel was a hard character for me to get to like, he’s an odd mix of child and adult for the first three books, starts to come alive in the fourth, then spends most of the fifth book injured and out of commission. This does give him time to get to know Platinum, and I did appreciate that. But these are young men, falling in love. I wanted a physical manifestation of that love. Even if it was the off page sex we saw earlier in the series with Dane and Mercury. I’m not even sure they have shared a kiss by the end of the fifth book. I was actually surprised how much I missed the sex…

As I said, Mell Eight is a new to me author. I did like her writing style, and for the most part I liked the characters. I loved Platinum particularly, and liked Nickel. I had issues with parts of the series which continued in to this book, but overall I enjoyed all of the books. They are fairly light, lots of humor since there are so many youngsters involved, and the overall plot was well done. I liked this book a bit more than the others plot-wise, a little more happens in it that got my attention. The ending was great as well.

If you have read the other books, you have GOT to read this one. If not, it is not a stand alone book, you’ll need to read the series to know what’s going on. I’m glad I read all of them back to back, and glad I was able to review this one. I’ll be checking out more books by this author!

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Less Than Three Press

Amazon