I read this book until about 3:30 in morning. I could have stopped, I wanted to stop but I felt compelled to see where this trainwreck was going to ultimately end up. Before I went to bed, I gave it two stars but when I woke up this morning and immediately thought of this book (ergh) I realized that rather than it "being okay," to me, I just didn't like it. Stick with me till the end and I shall explain to you the reasons why.I have read the first book in what I would loosely term a series though not really. And that novel was okay. Not exactly my cup of tea but not as disappointing as this one. The setting is the same and the dragons are the same but the protagonists are different. Anyway. Let's talk about the book.One of the earliest things that made me shake my head in incomprehension was the main character's "flaw." While she was being tortured (tortured!) by the witch hunters, she, unable to handle the pain, tells the names of the two friends who accompanied her into Dragonswood. While she was being tortured, mind you. This apparently makes her a less than nice person because how dare you tell the names of the friends who are not being tortured and are snug, if a bit scared, in their own houses while you are in a freaking dungeon being hurt horrendously. Then the "love interest" proceeds to judge her because of her "failure" to be strong in the face of excruciating pain and wow, my mind, it just sat back and mused at the utter stupidity of it all. These people are judging Tess without there being a single awareness of their own roles, as friends, where Tess is concerned. She is supposed to protect them even when her fingers are being torn off but these women didn't even make the slightest attempt to help her escape.Well. Okay. There was that mindfuckery involved. Then we move on to the bit that bothered me the most about this novel. The inconsistency in Tess's character. Her ear looks like a cauliflower from her father's beatings. The father also broke her hand and gave her black eyes and understandably enough, she is not too keen on men. ...Or so she says. Over and over, again and again. Only she doesn't actually act that way once the love interest enters the picture. There's a particular scene that really enraged me. Garth, the love interest, returns from wherever he had gone (this is never specified) and the dogs run outside, almost besides themselves with excitement. Tess says that she "barely restrains herself from doing the same" which effectively equalizes her to the freaking dogs. All she lacked was a tail. She goes on and on about marriage and how she's opposed to it and how "wedlock" means that the man would wed the wife and lock her away and then, almost in the same breath, she would go on and on about Garth, about how she was in love with him and how she would do anything for him. There is no consistency in her feelings about men and I find Carey's portrayal of an abused victim to be in poor taste and utterly infuriating to the woman in me. Actually, all her female characters are cast in the same mould. There's another wtfery moment when we find out that the witch hunter is not hunting witches, oh no, she (it's a woman, make the woman a villain, why don't you?) is going around killing innocent half-fey girls because she doesn't want them to marry the man she loves, the crown prince.What the fuck?And this murderess gets her man in the end and a crown. She becomes the freaking queen when I would have tossed her in a goal and thrown away the keep in an abyss for good measure. Because seriously? Ugh.There's something very sloppy about this whole novel. Apart from the issues I had it with where women and their portrayals are concerned - oh yes, the best friends, you know, the names Tess gave up because she's horrible like that? - they are ultimately proven to be weak-willed and just...yeah - there was no world building to speak of. There was no fleshing out of characters, hell, they seemed as tasteless and flat as cardboard. The plot was predictable and the love interest a huge bastard who did not redeem himself in any satisfactory way by the conclusion. And Tess...wow, she just earned herself a place in the hallowed hall of Heroines Who Make Me Want to Hurl. If I were you, I'd skip this one and go read something else.
