Hello, and welcome back! While I'm trying not to be disappointed that the weather forecast was wrong again and we still have no snow here, I have an unexpected mini-vacation from work, consecutive days off, which has given me time to get ahead in my reading among other things. This time, I have the last of the January releases to share with you.

Queen of Dragons (Bantam) by Shana Abe continues her drakon series. Princess Maricara has a sleep-flying problem. Every morning, she wakes someplace she didn't go to sleep, and the villagers are beginning to be angered by their missing livestock. But she discovers, before she leaves her remote homeland to go to England, that someone is hunting her kind, and that someone is human. Kimber Langford, Earl of Chasen, knows this princess he hasn't yet met is meant for him, meant to be his bride, to unite their drakon clans. The trouble will be persuading her. Maricara is an independent sort, used to having her own way, and she's no shrinking virgin but a widow who wants no more husbands. She leads him on a long chase, too, around England, before they can begin to hunt the person killing and capturing their kind. This one is very deliberately paced, nothing rushed. In some places, it is actually slow reading. It's well-done fantasy, but my biggest problem was that I didn't feel the romance aspect of the story nearly enough to convince me to believe. And the ending is rather abrupt, and leaves the reader hanging until the next installment of the series is released. That left me disappointed, as I'd heard very good things about this series. For the 'man in charge', Kimber isn't especially Alpha, as one might expect of a dragon. There were places I wished he'd just put his foot down and take a stand on Mari's behavior, rather than letting her do her own thing. And Mari, unfortunately, has some TSTL moments that didn't further her cause with this reader. Ah, well, I have a February dragon story here on my desk that I still have hope for. This one, however, only gets two and a half of Cupid's five arrows.

Until next time, happy reading!