Legion (Talon #4) by Julie Kagawa

The Talon has prepared for a long time to finally bring down the Order of St George and remove all of their competition to become dominant in the world. They have a Legion

Cloned dragons, without souls or personalities, just automata of dragons designed to fight and die. Finally Talon has numbers: and Dante is the conflicted master of them to unleash them

But behind that the Elder Wyrm continues to have another sinister plan – which directly involves Ember.

Ember is faced with being directly in opposition with her brother, having to protect an organisation bent on her destruction and dodge the machinations of a dragon who has lived for a millennium.

Broken record moment? I really really do feel that this series has really missed a lot of opportunity to properly develop the character of the dragons. We still have Ember and Riley referring to their dragons as if they were separate entity. Again, these characters aren’t weredragons – they are dragons who shift to human form to hide, but their natural form, their real form, is that of a dragon. So Ember struggling with her inner dragon or being conflicted about what her dragon wants, or struggling between her human side and dragon side feels wrong – like a narrative has been cribbed from an entirely different story. What human side? Why does she even have a human side? Why is she even attracted to a human? Why does she even want to do things like kiss? Why is a dragon distracted and pole-axed by the presence of a naked human? Why is a male dragon not looking at a naked woman and not thinking “mammary glands, which my egg laying species has no real concept of. Also, no cloaca”.

Yes, I am making you imagine sexy cloacas. My mind went there, so you have to suffer as well.

It’s like the concept hasn’t been fully realised and we get a simplistic depiction that mirrors a lot with other were-animal narratives out there but doesn’t really fit with the world as it’s presented/

I feel this reflected again with the world building – this sense of not quite seeing things through. Like Talon has been designated as The Evil and so it is The Evil. This is the antagonist, so be it.

But, again, there’s so little examination of the reason behind Talon. It didn’t happen because Dragons decided they wanted to be The Most Evil – it happened because the Order of St George was literally driving dragonkind to extinction: and is still trying to achieve this. They’re just the bad guys who need to be stopped

And Talon comes up with a plot to wipe out the Order of St George and there’s so little actual examination of the fact this is an organisation that wants to make dragons extinct. An organisation that wants to kill every character here. But killing the Order is presented as a terrible difficult conflict without any acknowledgement that Talon has a point. I feel like because Talon has been designate as The Evil then no-one’s allowed to acknowledge the grey and the complexity that is built into the very world building of this world.

Soldier (Talon Saga #3) by Julie Kagawa

Ember is recovering from the horrors she’s had to partake in in a very short period of time – but she has little time to recover or get her bearing. Riley has a new mission, a traitor in his ranks and a possible lead where female dragons are tortured and enslaved to produce young: he cannot let tjhis lead go.

At the same time Garrett uncovers a plot within the Order of St John which similarly demands their urgent attention – and for Garret to rejoin the team.

I mentioned this in my review of the previous book in this series but I really need to reiterate it now because it’s so sad to me – this book series does an incredible job of taking a really interesting, potentially fascinating concept and making it Utterly Bland Paint-by-the-numbers-Paranormal-YA.

It’s frustrating. There’s so much here that could be interesting and different and generally unique and it’s all ignored in favour of telling a story that is so utterly generic and forgettable that it’s genuinely hard to write a review afterwards.

Take the supernatural – we have dragons here. Actual dragons. Not weredragons or vampires or witches or some other magically-enhanced human. No, this is a completely alien species. Think of how we could explore how their minds work, think of the conflict this would cause over them interacting with humans. Think of how their culture would be so vastly different, how completely alien everything about them would be. But I get no sense of Ember and Riley being anything but human. Or even Ember’s brother Dante still working with Talon. Or even the guys he’s working with. No dragon in this series has shown themselves to have anything but a human mind set. Which is especially frustrating because part of the attempted conflict of this book is Ember and Riley wondering about whether or not they are becoming too human or not human enough: but they’re not inhuman! We also continue to have the weird “my dragon thinks/does/act” statements which makes no real sense. Again, it’s like someone copying a generic “wereanimal” storyline and not trying to actually adapt it to the original world building of this world.

This is especially frustrating with the romance. I mean, how would a romance even happen when the love interest is a huge lizard? “Let us press our squishy mouth parts together, small warm blooded hairy monkey creature.” Why does Ember even look at Garrett or Riley in human disguise and think of them in a sexual way? I’m not saying don’t have this romance – I’m saying develop this. Work with them AS alien beings finding love rather than just ignoring it and pulling out a storyline that could easily sit in any werewolf book out there.

Rogue (Talon #2) by Julie Kagawa

Ember and Riley have escaped from the Talon and are now Rogue dragons on the run. In theory they should go into hiding, especially since Riley’s network of freed dragons is under threat and needs his attention

But Garret is still imprisoned, the former St George soldier faces execution if they do not save him – and he did save their lives. But are they really going to risk everything to save someone who once slaughtered their kind?

Dante, Ember’s brother, is also desperately hunting them. If he finds Ember, bring her home maybe he can still save her – and maybe his own position in the Talon won’t be irretrievably damaged. But how far will he go against his sister for the sake of his position?

I think this book is better than the first one as it has made an attempt to get some motivations in order beyond “hot person is hot so I will happily throw away my loyalties and beliefs even though I’ve only known them for a couple of days.”

So Ember is focused a little more on how the Talon was demanding she kill, including killing her own kind since, as a Viper, she would be required to hunt down rogues. There’s a lot of her reflection that she can’t bring herself to do that, doesn’t want to become that and, even as she fights for her own survival, is afraid of becoming someone who can kill without remorse. She’s afraid that her own fight for survival will turn her into the creature that Talon always wanted her to become. It’s a level of depth to her supremely shallow story that works far better than her deciding Talon was evil before she had any evidence, or deciding to be a rebel without any good reason or trust a stranger with even less. If you forget the first book, Ember now makes something approaching sense.

Similarly Riley/Cobalt had a wonderful back story that explored a lot of his reasons for going Rogue in the first place. His motivations are excellently explored and his history really does display perfectly why he could no longer work for the Talon and why he was driven to start working against them. Through his past we see a full reasoning for him trying to get Ember and the other hatchlings out of Talon’s control and a really strong reason for why he either wants to bring them down (along with Wes who we can see has his own real motivations). This was excellently done

Which then crashes and burns with the huge chunk of this book where Riley decides to risk himself and his entire network to rescue Garrett for Ember. We spend so much of this book exploring his past, really bringing out why he has such a beef against Talon and how important his work is – but he’s willing to jeopardise all of that for Ember? Similarly, Ember is willing to risk her life and freedom (which she just fought so hard for), Riley’s life and his network (which she knows is so important) for the sake of Garrett who she still doesn’t know all that well? This book is trying to get away from the generic and dubious romance that clumsily dominated the first book but still badly undermines that progress.

The same applies to Garrett – now Garrett realising that Ember and other dragons are actually beings with feelings rather than monsters and demons should have been an excellent character moment. And I liked that he made this point before his tribunal rather than call on his love for Ember. His realisation that it is wrong to kill dragon-kind simply for being dragons should have been a powerful one and a character defining moment. It also should have been a moment of soul-shattering revelation and a whole lot of introspection because he has been hunting and slaughtering dragons for so long and so successfully his fellow hunters called him the “Perfect Soldier”. But we don’t get that – most of his storyline far more focuses on his attraction and love for Ember than the revelation that he has been involved in an unjust genocide – it doesn’t even make the character feel evil because it’s just so badly executed. Again, there’s an attempt to move on, but the romance that started this series is dragged out even when it’s grossly inappropriate.

Talon (Talon #1) by Julie Kagawa

Ember and her brother Dante are young dragons sheltering in the Talon, a world-wide organisation encompassing all dragons from the genocidal threat of the Order of St George. It’s a  threat that looms even as Ember chafes at the restrictions Talon places on her – and the future it has planned for her.

Out in the human world for the first time, they are being hunted by St. George – including the hunter Garrett who is trying to discover which human in town is a dragon; and in doing so gets far closer to Ember than he expected.

When I saw this book I thought it seemed very original – I mean, I haven’t read a lot of Urban Fantasy concerning dragons out there so dragons having to pass as human and avoid being hunted while still being quintessentially draconic seemed like an excellently different concept, one I’ve only read once before.

Except it isn’t – because it doesn’t matter that these creatures are dragons hunted by the Order of St. George. They could be vampires hunted by the Order of Van Helsing. They could be werewolves hunted by the Order of the Silver Bullet. They could be fae hunted by the Order of the Iron Cross. They could be Telemarketers hunted by the Order of Screamed Obscenities and Hanging Up. It’s irrelevant, the story would be identical. The actual kind of supernatural being makes no difference at all to the plot, the character development or anything else. It’s a tragic waste of world building, development and original idea.

Ember herself is a horrendously generic character for someone who is supposed to be non-human. She thinks like a teenaged girl (and not a particularly smart one at that) not a dragon hatchling. Her mindset is entirely human. The few tiny attempts to show that she isn’t human (her like of shiny things) are miniscule mentions that don’t relate to the story. This is not only a wasted opportunity but it makes little sense in the limited world building provided and leaves Ember feeling like an extremely clichéd, generic character which is terrible because she SHOULD be more alien than just about anything I’ve read. She’s a giant firebreathing reptile, she was hatched from an egg, she isn’t even a mammal. Her viewpoint should be so far from human (or vampire or werewolf which are at least partially human!) as it’s possible to be – but there is nothing different about her. Worse we have some weird elements that just don’t fit and feel cribbed from other books – why does Ember refer to her dragon wanting something? Why does she even use the lines “my dragon wants…”? Why does she argue with “her dragon”? She is a dragon – not a possessed or changed human, this makes no sense. It’d be like me saying “I tried to walk past the shop, but my human was craving coffee”. I may try that in future “I was going to finish that job, but my human was bored by it.” It’s bizarre and feels like someone lifting “my wolf” lines from werewolf stories without thinking whether they’re appropriate or not.