The Smoke Thief
Shana Abé
Bantam
I'm sitting in front of the television trying to generate the enthusiasm to write this post. I've been to the gym, I've gone for a walk and I've even checked my work email all in the spirit of procrastination.
Okay ... I'll just spit it out. This book was terrible. I'm not sure who gave the author the idea to mix a regency style romance with dragon-lore, but she probably should have backed away. Here's the premise ... somewhere in the English countryside there is a closed society of almost-humans descended from a race of jewel-loving shape shifters who are, of course, dragons. No one is allowed to leave the tribe and when someone does try to escape they are hunted,returned and punished and/or killed.
The heroine of our story, Clarissa, is one such escapee. On her seventeenth birthday, she learns that she can shape shift (unusual in clan women) so she fakes her own death and moves to the city. Fast forward a decade. Now a notorious jewel-thief, Clarissa's clandestine activities attract the notice of the dragon mean and the hunt begins. The rest of the story is so predictable that I won't bore you with the details. I promise to never read anything by this author again. One golden dragon out of five.
