Format: Kindle, 340 pages
Release Date: October 31st 2016
Publisher: White Soup Press
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Genre: Fantasy / Historical
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a dragon. Fitzwilliam
Darcy of Pemberley has the good fortune to be in possession of the
first English firedrake egg laid in a century. Or, at least, he was
until some miscreant stole it.
Mr. Darcy tracks the thief to
Hertfordshire. Catching the thief, however, proves to be an entirely
different kettle of brimstone, especially when he encounters fellow
Dragon Keeper, Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn.
Elizabeth
Bennet’s deep connection to dragons and remarkable grasp of their lore
make her the ideal companion for finding the egg. It’s too bad that from
their introduction she finds Darcy arrogant, conceited, and selfishly
disdainful of the feelings
of others.
Time is running out for
Darcy to win Elizabeth’s trust and recover the precious egg before it
hatches, and the fragile peace between humans and dragons is lost
forever.
Pemberley: Mr. Darcy's Dragon, is the first installment in author Maria Grace's Jane Austen's Dragons series. This is Pride and Prejudice and Dragons instead of Zombies. Hundreds of years ago, Uther Pendragon entered into an agreement with warring Dragons which lead to Dragons being almost everywhere in polite society. This is called the Pendragon Treaty and has never come close to being broken by either dragon or human. Massive dragons are associated with estates, smaller ones are likely found in the wildlife, and even tiny ones like hummingbirds can be found.
There are those who can hear dragons, like Elizabeth Bennet, those who are called Dragon Keepers, and those who are deaf to the voices of dragons. Kind of like Muggles in the Harry Potter books. Dragons are very good at hiding in plain sight. They speak spells of great persuasive power. Trouble happens when a firedrake egg is stolen from one Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley and he ends up at the Bennet's seeking help. With her father being the Historian of the Order, he and Elizabeth and her uncle are ordered to find the egg before it hatches.
Were it to hatch, it would break the treaty. Darcy, like Elizabeth, have dragons of their own. Darcy has a cockatrice dragon called Walker, Elizabeth has a fairy dragon named April. Of all the characters in this book, Elizabeth is the most gifted of all those who can hear dragons. She has a unique connection to all of them, including the massive wyvern dragon, Longbourn who is bound to her father. Darcy
is amazed and stunned at her ability to soothe dragons of every type, but his pride
makes him resist working with her to find the egg until circumstances
(and their dragons) force the issue.
Elizabeth
has inherited the role of Dragon Keeper from her father and thus is
also under rule to marry Collins as he will inherit Longbourn and its
wyvern dragon, Longbourn. This may be the dumbest thing her father and the Order has suggested for Elizabeth, and I am hoping this changes sooner rather than later because Collins is an idiot. She has no rhyme or reasoning to marry someone so arrogant, and deaf to the voices of the dragons. How exactly is he supposed to get along with Longbourn?
This
is a whole new world, loosely set in the Regency era, but with dragons. Dragons come in various breeds and rankings, possess
their own government, and live in complex harmony with humans. This is not one of those Jane Austen retellings where Elizabeth and Darcy fall madly in love and thus their dragons, and they live happily ever after until a zombie hoard and the four horsemen of the apocalypse show up to ruin the moment. Ok, I so made that last part up a about the zombies and the horsemen.
Though
nominally bearing the names of the characters from the original
classic like Bingley and Collins, most of the characters in this book differ from their
namesakes. Elizabeth's sisters, except for Jane and Mary who binds to her own dragon, are pretty much tertiary characters who don't really matter to the storyline. Elizabeth mother is overbearing, and frightfully out of touch with Elizabeth's reality to the point where I was hoping that someone would tell her to sit down and zip her lips.
One could legitimately say that this is the first Act is a seven or eight part play which ultimately means that if you read this book, you definitely have to read the sequel in order to find out what happens next. Especially between Darcy and Elizabeth and why Longbourn was so secretive and demanding. I actually picked this book up on a whim since I love books with dragons in them. In fact, I just finished up with Dragon Heir by another another which will post on Friday of this week.
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