Dragons at Last! Keri Arthur’s "Burn"

by Sharon Tucker

Details on how to win an ebook copy of the book, and links to purchase it, at the end of this review.

“No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith.” R.A. Salvatore, Streams of Silver

As we know, in Keri Arthur’s Kingdoms of Earth and Air series, each of the previous novels transpires in a different continent on the same planet. The protagonists of the previous two novels turned out to have world-saving abilities of which they were unaware and came into their powers more and more as the novels progressed. Her most recent series entry, Burn (2019), begins in a prison transport with a narrator who has lost a significant portion of her memory. She is among the captured and apparently in the hands of her people’s worst enemy, the Mareritt, or Ice People.

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Our first person narrator suffers from amnesia. She does not know who she is, much less why she is a prisoner. What she does know is that she is highly irritated by the prisoner whose chains she shares. He constantly refers to her as “ice maiden," linking her to the Mareritt, their captors. She remembers enough to despise anything Mareritten and has to be continually cautioned not to advertise that contempt if she wants any of them to stay alive. What little memory she has is murky with impenetrable gaps, but she knows she is “kin," a dragon rider with a telepathic link to all dragons and the ability to throw fire. Her imprisoned companion, Kai, is more than he seems and by default, certain she is a Mareitten spy.

After a protracted escape from their captors, during which our narrator amply demonstrates her antipathy for the Mareitt, Kai plies her with questions and continually test her loyalties while they elude recapture and make their way unobtrusively across their native Arleeon. The urgent goal is to get her, whom he calls Red, to a reader to see if she is who she claims to be. As they travel across occupied territory, Red is shocked to learn that her home, her relatives, their dragons, and even her own dragon may all be dead due to a series of cataclysmic magical ice events, or coruscations. All that is familiar to her ceased to exist long ago--is lost. Or is it? Is it possible that since she has escaped from a coruscation that others have as well or might they be frozen but alive?

At least all hope seems not to be lost as Kai begins to trust Red (her name is actually Nara) and shares with her the existence and workings of a healthy underground rebellion amongst the citizens of Arleen. Her discovering and effectively communicating with a surviving dragon further cements Kai’s trust, not to mention the undeniable bond and growing physical attraction between them they stop bothering to deny.

Burn is quite an adventure due to Arthur’s deft touch writing action scenes and creating characters we want to know or to be. Due to Nara’s amnesia and her groping to remember who she is and what to do about it, we are slowed down a bit as the novel begins, but as the action scenes proliferate and Nara and Kai fulfill their destinies, the payoff is most rewarding. I have so enjoyed reading the Kingdoms of Earth and Fire and cannot wait for the next novel in the series!

To enter to win an ebook copy of Burn, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line "cursed,” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen July 27, 2019. If you enter via comment please include your email address. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

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Burn

Sharon Tucker is former faculty at the University of Memphis in Memphis TN, and now enjoys evening supervising in that campus library. Having forsworn TV except for online viewing and her own movies, she reads an average of 3 to 4 books per week and has her first novel---a mystery, of course---well underway.

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.