Dragon Rose (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms Book 1)

First of all, I want to say that I'd have given this a 2.5 star for the concept of the story line if the option was there, but I couldn't in good conscience bump it up to a 3 star. The story started out with great promise, but quickly fell flat. I wanted more character development. The dragon was a major disappointment. I felt she could have done so much more with him. I also think she could have woven bits and pieces of the backstory throughout the book instead of dumping it all on the reader at the end. All in all, I felt it the work of a good writer, but a lazy writer who did the bare necessities to get the story to print... right down to the poor editing and sentence structure; which I found irritatingly distracting, but would have been easier to overlook if the story was faster paced and more interesting.. I want to wag my finger and say "shame on you" for her laziness when she clearly had the skills to do better. Maybe it's just me, but since it's clear she has writing skills, I feel a little cheated that she didn't give this story her all and use those skills to their fullest. She could have had a great story. Instead, it's just an okay story. This is the first novel I've read from this author, so I'd give her another try just because I recognize her latent talent, but if she's consistent in her slow and lazy style of writing in the next book of hers that I read will be the last book of hers that.I read.

First let me say I LOVE the idea of this book. I love the concept. The author definitely has a way with words and her descriptiveness is really well done. For that I would give this book 2.5 stars. But that's about it. I do NOT understand the 5 star reviews. Come on people. 5 stars?! The story starts out promising with a mysterious dragon prince and a brave young woman volunteering to be his bride so that her good friend can marry the man she loves. But once at the castle the author inexplicably stops the story development. It then reads more like a diary of the main characters daily activities. I mean really. Right down to the most boring and mundane minutiae. Her meals. Her gowns. Her dreams. Her every thought about the simplest things. It is almost as if the author just got lazy and didn't want to take the time to develop an actual story. Page after page of this nonsense. There was NO need for this. And meanwhile you hardly see or hear from the dragon prince. He is just scenery. No depth. No breadth to his character. He is painfully one dimensional. As story like this would have been better told from third person so he could be developed more. So I yawned and limped through the bulk of the book. A lot of the conversation was corny as well. And the ending was rushed like the ending of a Scooby Doo episode. Here again the author could have done so much more. But it was just as flat and boring as the middle of the book. It was one long recitation by the dragon about why he is cursed and why he allowed woman after woman to come to their deaths. I'm sorry but it was silly and half thought out. This book could have been so much more. I'm glad I got it free. I have no idea why anyone would rate it a 5 star. Have we been dummed down this badly by all these new self publishers? I don't know. To the author I say nice try but this story needs more meat. More sustenance. More action. Less first person musings about the weather and her gowns.

This book was free with Prime. I wanted to like it. It started off really well. She was rebellious and a kind of a trouble-maker but good at heart. The Dragon's method of choosing his brides was consistent with the reason for choosing them in the first place...kind of a twist on stories where a virgin had to be sacrificed to the volcano god to appease him...but in this case was to fulfill a curse (no spoiler here). I don't understand the brides' age limit on the curse though. Was the sorcerer that strategic? Also, there was a hiccup on the finishing of the painting. Once completed that should've been the trigger, not when he "saw" it. It would've have ended better if the trigger and her trip into a downward spiral happened at the same time...a better tragic ending. As for the Dragon, I thought the story would've been about him as well but it wasn't. He seem to just spend time doing a whole lot of nothing. The author didn't allow him to entertain any feelings, even negative ones, so there was no connection between the two, no sparks, even in the end. There was also potential for this to be a "dark" love story. Maybe she could do a re-write! :)

I love dragons. The idea of being able to shift back and forth between being a dragon and being a human has intrigued me since I first had "Tea with the Black Dragon" a la McAvoy several decades back. I had hopes for this novel.Alas, no tea.It is a retelling of Villeneuve's tale with nice changes that kept it interesting and pulled me along to the very end. However, I'm glad I got it for free, and I doubt that I will buy any of the others. I liked it, but not enough to try anything else from this author.Ms. Pope's writing is good, and she has an editor who can actually do the job, unlike so many of the e-books out these days. There were no grammar errors (and, having been a tech editor, I assure you that I would have noticed) and fewer than a handful of typos. These days, that's a solid "A" in my grade book.The heroine is just turning 20. The story is told from her point of view. Some of what we see is even all in her head. There is a considerable amount of her talking/thinking to herself about her situation and her dreams. There's just too much teen-age angst for me; I get enough of that talking to my grandkids. Maybe it should be marked YA.

this is a weird twist on the beauty & the Beast fairytale.If you've read  Cruel Beauty  or  The Hollow Kingdom: Book I -- The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy  you'll have high expectations.Unfortunately so far the writing style and the heroine is beginning to grate on me. Within the first few chapters the heroine is whinging about the restrictions of society, her family dynamics (selfish siblings) and boasting how noble and avant-garde she [the heroine] is. I appreciate this was to allow is to realise why she [the heroine] would be a better candidate to sacrifice her life as the Dragon bride, but is was executed poorly.The writing style tries for Ye Olde World by being stiltedly formal at most times, while using modern words at others. And it was also a tediously annoying writing style e.g. (this isn;t a quote from the book) "then I walked to the door, which was brown and sturdy, however, my dress was long and flowing. Hark, there goes my heart, beating dreadfully at the thought of being the Dragon's Bride. I can hear the sounds..." Cruel BeautyThe Hollow Kingdom: Book I -- The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy

"For the first time, I understood reality could be so much lovelier than dreams"Dragon Rose is a book from the Tales of the Latter Kingdoms series by Christine Pope.If you like re-telling of classic Disney stories but with a new twist then this series is something you should definitely have a look at.At the beginning of the book we meet Rhianne, the eldest of 4 daughters who is being courted by a much older man, hoping she will marry him.Her mother thinks this is a good suit for her daughter, but Rhianne has different ideas.Selflessly saving her best friend from a marriage to the Dragon of Black's Keep, Rhianne offers herself as his bride.There are lots of stories about how the Lord of Black's keep became a dragon, everyone knows he was cursed, but no one knows why or how to break the curse.Will Rhianne be the one to break it? Or will she perish like his many brides before her?"No, Rhianne" he exclaimed, and his arms tightened around me. "Fight it. You must fight it, my darling."Christine Pope keeps you immersed in this story with great characters and a story line that will have you hooked.Her writing keeps the book flowing at a great pace and doesn't go to heavy into things that will never concern the character again.As much as Lord Theran, the Dragon of Black's Keep is a private character you feel you get to know him well enough to want him to get his happy ending, but he is still held back from the reader a great deal so to keep the mystery surrounding him and his curse.The only thing I would have liked to have seen more of was the Dragon form itself, it appears only twice in the whole book and only for a paragraph or two at most. The rest is Theran in his human form.Also the only interaction Rhianne and Theran had was when they had dinner together at night. It would have been interesting to see the characters together in a different inviroment.at the end you never hear what happens to the servants with their new Lord and how they have reacted, which would also have been nice to see.Over all it was an very enjoyable read and I am certainly going to be picking up the other stories in this collection!

Quite beautifully written and crafted for the most part, with strong 'beauty and the beast' vibes. Then, abruptly, everything is tied up in record time, and the careful depths of the protagonists' relationship are given slightly less than their due. Still, recommended for an atmospheric fairy tale.

This isn't bad. It's a simple retelling of beauty and the beast, very clean - the romance is not a passionate one, in fact it's rather underwritten, so I wouldn't have a clue these characters had fallen in love without them telling us. But despite that lack of drama and fire, it's quite readable, and short enough that you can get through it in a couple of hours. A good book for a plane ride.

This is a modern take on a fairy tale set in an alternative medieval reality. All the characters were well rounded and believable. I really liked the protagonist, and her very real-life musings, as well as how night time and dreams punctuated the story, giving it itself a dream-like quality. A great and enjoyable read!