Fury of Fire (Dragonfury)

Welcome to Washington State.

This debut novel is the beginning to many additional installments.
Bastian is one of the oldest of his kind; an all male race born of human females - dragon-shifters. As leader of the Nightfury dragon clan it is his duty to protect humankind. With their numbers declining he needs to set an example. With only 5 days until the Meridian's axis realign, he has less than a week to find a mate.

"...Be the first to commit, to have a son, to lose his female in child birth."

Myst Munroe, a nurse practitioner, just wants to check on her pregnant patient - Caroline Van Owen. She is still recovering from her mother, Dana's, murder. When she arrives at Caroline's house and discovers her lying in a pool of blood - the flashbacks begin. Her training kicks in and she works to save both mother and her unborn child. Soon Bastian and his first in command, Rikar, arrive dressed as EMS workers - the battle begins.

Bastian feels an immediate attraction to Myst; her energy is unlike anything he has experienced before. Seeing her distress, he feels a compelling need to take care of her. For Bastian, that is something that has never happen before - but it is the one thing that he can't seem to control. When Myst starts to recover from the shock she become desperate, he knows that she will need his help - even if she is reluctant to accept it. Before long, Bastian finds himself unable to maintain his control - he wants to claim Myst for his own.

This is an emotion packed book that will make you laugh and make you cry. Myst's plight comes right off the pages. Her confusion over her feelings for Bastian tears her.
The secondary characters enrich the story. It's a good thing that we will get 2 more installments this year (according to Amazon):
[[ASIN:161218295X Fury of Ice (Dragonfury Series #2)]] ~ Releasing 4/24/12 ~ Excerpt in back of this book
[[ASIN:1612182968 Fury of Seduction (Dragonfury Series #3)]] ~ Releasing 7/24/12

NOTE: I did not finish Fury of Fire. I reached page 207, out of 412, before I called it quits. My review reflects on what I read and no more, which is more than enough to be indicative to how the author creates her book.

During the course of reading, everyone comes across a book that just doesn't connect with them. That doesn't mean the book is bad or that others shouldn't read it, it just means the it isn't a good fit that particular person. This is that book for me. I had a very difficult time getting through what I read, mostly due to a bunch of little things that stood out and were what I consider oddities, especially in context to situations in the book. If I had to describe this book in one word, it'd be abrasive. The characters, the dialogue, and most importantly, the writing felt like rubbing sandpaper over a wound. Over and over again.

THE BAD

The constant bombardment of internalizing that both Myst and Bastian provide in this book was like a splinter under my fingernail. The more I dug, the more painful it became, and I started to dislike the book and main characters more and more as I read on. Admittedly, it was pretty easy to loathe Bastian and Myst when it became apparent that they are both boring and stupid, and I didn't find Bastian all that likeable in the first place. Call me crazy, but I just feel uneasy when a character wants to immediately jump the bones of a person he just met in horrific situation while she is frightened beyond belief. But apparently that's okay because he acknowledges his creepiness in a fit of mental self-flagellation. Sorry, but that doesn't fly with me. Maybe if that had been mentioned only once, I would have let it slide, but it keeps on like that for way too long. Apparently he's all alpha on the outside and emo on the inside. What a winning combination! Not. Myst herself starts off, uh, decent enough but then quickly becomes the nitwit I was hoping to avoid. She gets the fastest case of Stockholm Syndrome I've ever come across. For all intents and purposes, Bastian kidnapped her. Sure, we the readers know it's for Myst and the baby's safety from the evil Razorbacks, but she certainly doesn't know that, therefore I found her reactions extremely unrealistic and bizarre to the situations she was in. One minute she's fighting, and by fighting I mean being stubbornly spunky, or somewhat thinking of escape, the next she's imagining wild, hot monkey sex with Bastian. I'm sorry but if some big, six-foot-six (apparently every male is 6'6 in this book, even the human cop. Obviously, if a guy is under that height, he's not really a man.), scary dude who can turn into a dragon kidnaps me, I am so not going to be thinking about how hot they are or what they're like in the sack. Yeah, uh-huh, that makes perfect sense. Oy! Anyway, they end up making out that night due to Bastian's alpha going crazy and some supernatural roofie that dragons put out to females. God, this is not romantic at all. And it's only been a few hours since they "met"! The morning after Myst is kidnapped, she wakes up naked and finds out Bastian bathed her, can you say mondo creepy? So after she dresses, she goes meandering through the Nightfury's lair, admiring his artwork and crap, then ends up in the kitchen with the rest of the freaky-tall Nightfuries. I'd be high-tailing it out of there, in fact, I would have been plotting escape long before this point. It appears she only thinks of escape once a day. While she's in the kitchen, Bastian has her sit at the table so she can eat her breakfast. He sets down a plate in front of her and as she goes to have a bite, she notices he cut her waffles into little, perfect, bite-size pieces and she's apparently overcome by this act. Can you say weird? All feminist angles aside, who cuts up someone else's food unless: A, it's for a small child, two, their arms and hands are broken, or D, they're handicapped in some way that prevents them from feeding themselves? W.T.F.? Frankly, I think it's just odd. And then she gets misty-eyed (Myst is all misty, how cute. *gag*) when he asks her to help name the baby he kidnapped. I've already doubted her sanity before but now it's gone to even more ridiculous heights by this point.

The magical Rohypnol I mentioned before creeped me the heck out. So when a dragon guy needs his energy fix, he picks out a woman, roofies her, feeds off her energy, sleeps with her, and then wipes her memory! Say what? That's too close to rape for my liking. This wasn't just the bad guys doing this, but the next book's "hero" did that to a woman in a hospital (note: she wasn't a patient, I think she was a researcher or something, I don't remember). How sweet.

The excessive swearing needed edited down. Normally I don't mind a little cursing here and there, but so much of it didn't need to be added to the dialogue or characters and showed a lack of creativity.

The "dragons" are really shape-shifting vampires. They have to feed off women, only it's energy instead of blood, they can't be out in the sun, they heal quickly, live a long time, are super-strong, amongst other attributes. If you're going to have shape-shifting dragons, don't make them so similar to other paranormal species. Differentiate them so they're unique, not a near-clone.

I didn't like the whole reading of minds thing. If it was something that happened when mated, fine, but I don't like the thought of someone just arbitrarily getting into someones else's brain whenever they want. It's a violation. Bastian did this to Myst way too often.

The characters sound a lot like each other. They don't all have individual voices so there isn't much beyond a name separating one from the other.

THE GOOD

The first fight scene was actually quite well-done, although it was very early on in the book so it might not hold up on a second reading. The next fight scene wasn't too bad, maybe a little confusing at times.

The other characters in the Dragonfury series have the potential to be more interesting if they can be given some individuality, but since I didn't connect with the author's writing style and don't like most of the ideas, I won't be looking for any sequels to this oh-so-romantic series. I wouldn't recommend this book, but hey, if it sounds right up your alley, by all means try it out for yourself.

As a final note, I just wanted to thank Buzz McCallister for his mad counting/alphabetizing skillz in writing this review. I couldn't have done it without you.

I'm leaning on a 2 and a half star rating for this one. It just didn't really grab me the way I'd hoped it would. The plot was decent. I guess, but I only say this because the last 5 chapters of this one was filled with a little suspense and good action sequences. I could see the action playing out as if I were watching a movie. And this I liked. Still, this one leaves me with the feel of... Unoriginal. No, that's not it. Or maybe it is. But "Generic" is the word that also comes to mind. From the allure of what draws these dragons to the human females, to what sustains them. It just read as super cheesy to me. Bastian & Myst had their moments. But these were too far and between to keep me captivated with them. And it took forever to get the ball rolling with these two. Way too much set up for the next book early on in this one, left me wanting for the main characters. Which was not good for me due to the fact that I'm not really interested in Riker & Angela. (Who will be the H/h in book 2)

Also the charcters spent way too much time in their own heads and not enough communicating to one another. Too much inner dialogue for majority of the book. It just didn't work. It left me with the feeling that I was still missing something profound with these two main characters. You're "told" Bastian and Myst have this profound love. You don't see or feel it.

Now, I'm a huge BDB fan. And yes there are some similarities within this book, but not enough to turn you off or to cause you to not recognize this is still a very different story and scope from the BDB.

If you love dragons or this author, then I would say give this one a try. If dragons aren't your forte and you are on the fence about this one, borrow it. Don't buy it.

I found Fury of Fire, the first in a trilogy, to be an outstanding and original concept, and although it was a fast and enterataining read, I couldn't seem to lose myself in the story. It surrounds battling clans of Dragonkind, half-human, half-dragon warriors and their ongoing struggles to preserve their own kind as well as the human race. It's primary genre is romance with some very sexy bedroom scenes, but does also fall into an Urban Fantasy category with world building around a modern Seattle setting.

Dragonkind have a curse worse than vampires in this world. They must feed off of energy emitted by humans and although they can generally control what they take, there is always the possibility of draining them to death. To make matters worse, their species is made up entirely of males with their population dwindling as their battles to preserve the human race wage on. It is possible for them to reproduce with human females, but it's essentially a death sentence since no human females have survived the birth, making any sort of long term relationship impossible. When Bastion, leader of the Nightfury clan, decides to set an example by siring a son, he has five days before the Meridian's axis aligns, the time when their power source takes over and compels them to breed, to find a candidate.

Myst Munroe is a traveling nurse practictioner, so when her pregnant friend Caroline's latest blood test comes back abnormal and doesn't return her calls, Myst decides to pay a housecall. When she gets there, Caroline is already dead lying in a pool of her blood, but miracle of miracles, her baby is still alive in her womb. Myst calls emergency services for an ambulance and makes a grey area ethical decision to perform a gruesome c-section with a kitchen knife. That is when all hell breaks loose. Bastion and his best friend Rikar intercept the ambulance with plans to kidnap the child, keeping it's fate from their hated enemies, the Razorbacks, but when they arrive, they find Myst, who's enormous energy source essentially knocks them on their asses. Bastion is immediately taken by Myst and knows he's found the mother of his son, but he doesn't have time to take it all in because the Razorbacks were already on their way to claim the child and he fights desperately to not only take the child, but protect the highly coveted and powerful woman.

Being the first of a trilogy, this was an engrossing and complicated first installment that lays the foundation of allies and enemies, as well as potential romantic pairings. I love the uniqueness of each of the characters, but the interaction and dynamics work really well at times, and others not so much. The reason falls under the writing style and tone, which unfortunately, doesn't change as we get a point of view from each character. They all say "Man" as in "Man, this is can't be happening," and you can't have a cast of a dozen characters, both human and 100+ year old dragon, who all talk the same. The reactions of Myst were also sometimes believable, and others not. Either you're scared out of your wits or you're plucky, and for some reason, her introduction to the world of dragons just didn't work for me. Last, but certainly not least, was the romantic chemistry. Apparently, human women have absolutely no control over their emotions to Dragonkind so Myst and Bastion's relationship isn't so much a building of affection as it is a tsunami of compulsion, which diminishes the romance factor. Regardless, the author has an interesting tale to tell and with some added depth to emotions and tone, this could end up being a great series.

I thought this book sounded like a good one. I wish I had "sampled" it first. I began to skip through this book, page after page, trying to find something interesting. I must admit I did slough through it until the end. The end was better than the first two-thirds of the book. Who were these dragons who came out at night to protect humans? Why, if they were hundreds of years old did they use such modern language and use so much profanity, but still call their women "my female"? The characters, especially the dragons, were not fleshed out enough to get a good understanding of who each one of them was. The way they treated the women, "stealing" their energy, having sex with them and then erasing the woman's memory of it was more on the boundaries of rape. I guess my real thought is that the book was boring. I love a good shape-shifter book, esp. those such as the Dark Hunter stories by Kenyon. I enjoy the supernatural by Cole, or even the evil magical faeries like Moning's Fever series, and the vampires in Harris' Sookie books, but I just could not get into this book.

In what we could all probably agree is a saturated genre, how critical is originality? Is a new idea more important than good execution? That is the key to how Fury of Fire will be received, I think. The story is well told. It's interesting, the pace is solid and the characters are well developed. Stars 1,2 and 3. Extra points for the male POVs, and for the hero, Bastian. Another point for Riker, Bastien's best friend and fellow warrior. But Fury of Fire doesn't bring anything new to the PNR table.

Bastian is terrific, and I thought he was pretty original. He is more sensitive than most uberalphas that populate the PNR genre, even taking on a semi submissive role with the heroine. He thinks before he acts and seems to have a good moral compass. He lost a point for me when he deliberately does something that he knows will potentially endanger Myst's life. I don't want to be more specific due to spoilers.Other than that, I really liked him.

Myst, the heroine, had a couple of TSTL moments, and not enough redeeming qualities to oversome the TSTLisms. This is typically a deal breaker for me, for a character, and Myst was no exception. Not my favorite heroine ever, for sure.

I was impressed by the way the love scenes between Bastian and Myst were written. Truly lovely, with a good level of heat. That said, I didn't quite buy Myst's acquiense to having to stay at the Dragon compound, even as Bastian bargained with her to stay for three days. She was still trying to escape, even though it was a sure thing that the bad guys were going to do bad guy things to her if they caught her. I felt Bastian's attraction and desire for Myst clearly, but Myst's attraction to Bastian did not translate as well.

I liked the other dragons. Riker,the hero of the second book in the series, drew me in quite easily. I am intrigued by one of them, Wick. I would like to know his story.

The villian was a pretty standard megalomaniacal type. Don't know if he survived the battle at the end of this book. If that was spelled out, I missed it.

The fate of one character that may be able to shed some light on Myst's role as Bastian's mate was left dangling, or I missed the conclusion. I went back and reread the passage, but no idea what happened to him. And another big plot point having to do with the actual condition that causes the death of the human women impregnated by the dragons was never brought up again once it was discovered. Hopefully, we will be revisiting these issues in the next two books.

The biggest problem, as referenced several times already, is the similarity to primarily the BDB, but I see heavy shadings of Lara Adrian's Breeds, as well. Heavy use of slang, characters repeatedly referring to their fellow dragons as "the male", not to mention the oh, so clever turns of phrase...the JR Ward comparisons are unavoidable, and deserved. Aside from that obvious similarity, I see references that could directly relate back to several other established, long running PNR series. The puzzling use of well known names bears repeating - Lothair and Myst scream Kresley Cole and Gregor puts me in the mind of Christine Feehan. Just thought the names were odd choices given the association most readers of PNR have with those specific names. Unfortunately, when you combine all of those factors, the absense of anything new and ground breaking is underscored.

So what made this review so hard to write? Well, in my opinion, because Fury of Fire has better than average writing coupled with an almost total lack of original ideas. Substitute vampire for dragon and it's all been done before. But, even so, overall, I found the book to be very readable. And I will pick up the second book in the series as I really liked Riker and Angela, a Seattle detective. I'm curious, as I said, about Wick and Angela's partner on the SPD, Ian. I think the writing shows a great deal of promise. The rhythm and cadence of the story is good. I hope Ms. Callahan expands the mythology with some unique twists as she moves forward in the trilogy. I am cautiously optimistic.

I met this author while surfing on Goodreads a few months ago and I find out that she's a Canadian author (YAY)! The book's cover caught my eye and I must admit that the chosen model gives justice to Bastian, the main character of this story! I always look (crave) for stories with Dragons as shape shifters and there's not a lot of them, so I was pleased to stumble on this new series!

Fury of Fire is the first book from the Dragonfury series: released in February 2012. And as a new series, the next book (Fury of Ice) have been release in June 2012 and the third one (Fury of Seduction) will be release in November 2012! All in the same year, to enjoyed!

The story itself, ran like a dream, it was so perfect, totally my kind of read! The plot was awesome, well more than awesome but I just can't put my finger on a specific word... I find it quite innovative and surprisingly original! I would have love to live in a world with dragon shifters looming in the night, protecting the innocent and battle against the evil! I fell for the ''mythology'' and legends (history) of these spectacular creatures. Ms. Callahan really gives the reader a new paranormal specie to fall in love with.

Bastian is a great male character; he's the leader of the Dragonfuries and takes his work/title on the highest level. Always looking for his ''brothers'' fighting for the innocents and against other evil dragon gang. Probably the typical male character we usually read about in PNR stories. The first book in a series is always (almost) about the leader/king/ or the last of his kind. But (for me) these are the best characters! I liked his behaviour and mentality and the way he is around Myst!

Myst, what a great character name! I loved it! She's also a great character with a sublime personality. She's devoted to help others as a nurse and she got the biggest heart. Truly, the kind of girl you want as your best friend! Also, she's down to earth and reacts as a woman should when she discovered the Dragon world and Bastian's plan. She stay true to herself!

The plot was exciting and entertaining. I liked the fact that this story was happening in our time and not in medieval era. The mix of myths and sciences was great and refreshing and the way the book ended, I really want to know what will happen Myst discovery about genetic/scientific/DNA... Hmmm don't want to sell it out, but this story was really nice, I enjoyed every pages and I totally recommend this book to ever PNR lovers! I totally devoured this book, so go get your copy!

Proserpine @ Proserpine Craving Books
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Loved this book, stayed up till it was done and have preordered the next 2. I HATE waiting when I have found something I liked so well. Both main characters drew you in and made you desperate for things to turn out well for them.

Coreene is a super writer and this series is wonderful

It was full of action, great romance and sizzling sex terrific story line, cant wait to read the rest of the series