Review: Amethyst Bound by L. Shannon

Title: Amethyst Bound
Author: L. Shannon
Series: Amethyst Trilogy 1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release Date: 7 June 2010


Toni Giovanni is in what she calls the 'high-risk-recovery business' - or in other words she's a thief. Her latest job is to retrieve a special box and seems quite easy, that is until Toni puts on an amulet and binds herself to an ancient dragon named Amethyst. Suddenly everything goes crazy, and she's fleeing for her life towing along one sexy archaeologist - Dr. Ben Davis.

And that's just the start of it. Now someone's hunting her, she has to face her employer without his artifact and, oh yeah, there's an ancient prophecy that predicts dragons will end the world in a blaze of fire.

Can Toni and Amethyst learn to trust one another to avert disaster?

I was really excited for this book. Dragons are a special love of mine, and there just aren't that many books out there, especially compared to vampires and werewolves, that focus on them.

Honestly I sit here a couple of days later and I'm finding it hard to remember what I liked about this book. I thought the premise was interesting, but for me it was just lost in Toni's endless musing, thoughts and (surprisingly) conversation.

The book moved at a pretty slow pace, with lots of discussions on what they were going to do, and very little time spent on any action. While I normally love discussion between characters, because it lets me get to know them better, I felt that they were constantly treading over the same stuff - again and again. Despite being inside Toni's head all the time, I never really felt I got to know her. And because we never got Ben's point-of-view I feel even less connected to him.

There were a couple of moments that made me very interested. L. Shannon has obviously put some thought into the world, and I would have liked to see more development here. I do think that things moved along a little too easily in this book. Toni seemed to accept being bonded to a dragon with hardly any qualms. Even Ben didn't seem to be too shocked (even enjoying his first ride as a dragon passenger, moments after his first sight of a dragon).

Also there were a couple of things that came up later in the book that just made me wonder why they were there. Two other supernatural beings show up out of nowhere. And maybe they'll have some further significance later. Or perhaps I was just really looking forward to a book more focused on dragons and didn't want the other stuff.

I was very, very interested in a character that showed up at the end, and I may just pick up the next book in this series to see if more story helps me like it better (and to see Weaver).

I went into this book expecting romance, and while there is some I would more classify this as urban fantasy. I do think that this may have colored my initial expectations and could have had some impact on my final thoughts, but that's not completely it because I usually don't mind whichever one I happen to pick up.

Rating: C-

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