Given

 

Given by Nandi Taylor

I have always been a sucker for books about dragons. This book promises dragons, magic, POC, and some romance. ...but the delivery is a little.... mixed.

An amazon summary, "As a princess of the Moonrise Isles and one of its fiercest warriors, Yenni has always put duty before her own desires. When her father falls gravely ill, she knows she must find the cure and sets out on an arduous journey that takes her to a magical academy in the far reaches of the Empire of Cresh.

There is no room for failure, but Yenni struggles to learn the strange magic of Cresh as a cure continues to evade her. And complicating matters is Weysh, a dragon shifter who says Yenni is his Given―his one true partner ordained by destiny. As a dragon, Weysh is an ally, both in matters of magic and friendship. As a man, he is a beautiful and infuriating distraction.

With her father’s life hanging in the balance and her feelings for Weysh deepening, Yenni realizes her greatest challenge has just begun―save her people, while also following her heart." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

Yenni is a princess of the Moonrise Isles and needs to go to the Empire of Cresh to find a cure for her father's ailment. She asks to go on a Orire N'jem; a tradition where princes or princesses may make journeys to faraway lands in search of creatures, plants, or a sacred place with a dedication to the Sha (the Sha being their deities). If they can win the favor of the Sha, they may ask for a boon. An Orire N'jem is a year long. (As a complete sidenote, I want to say the Orire N'jem is also probably a sacrifice in some way to just leave their lands since there are a TON of implications throughout the rest of the book about the importance of royalty to the Isles. It's just never pointed out directly.) Yenni travels to the Empire of Cresh where she hopes to study a different form of magic to gain understanding to heal her father. Yenni is nearly a master of the runes; the runes are drawn with a paint/dye mixture and songs are sung as they are painted onto the body. The tune and concentration of the rune masters thoughts make it more powerful and effective at what it's supposed to do (I think).

Once Yenni is in the Empire of Cresh, no one knows she's a princess. She keeps her identity secret to reduce the political battles, but to also keep the other tribes of the isles at bay. Weysh, on the other hand, is a dragon. A dragon who sniffs out Yenni and immediately determines he is her Given; a true partner ordained by his own god. Yenni is not having anything to do with Weysh. There is a clash of cultures and what respect looks like for the both of them, but there is also so much more in the sense of clashing personalities as well. They both have a lot of growing to do in their own right.

That's enough summary.

So something that drove me nuts about this book, is that there is a side character, Diedre, who is in the empire of cresh, whose parents don't approve of rune magic, and who also speaks in a more familiar dialect to Yenni.Which, would be all fine and good, if this character was also part of an LGBTQIA+ representation. Yenni never has dialogue that is similar in nuances to Diedre even though in theory, the would have very similar dialects. I look for consistency in representation, and honestly, Diedre came across as an almost characterture of Yenni in a lot of ways. It was also confusing to basically have everyone refer to Yenni as a women of the Moonrise Isles... but it wasn't clear if that was based on she dressed (there was very limited descriptions of what clothing people were wearing) or her general biological features. Sometimes it seemed like only the runes drawn on her skin gave her away? But rune magic seemed to be common even if it wasn't well studied? I am confusion.

The story also suffered from introducing too many characters with very varied backgrounds, as none of them were really given the space or time to breathe. They just kind of felt like here is a name, here is a description, and here are some bullet point facts to remember about them. Ready? Go.

The world building was also pretty lacking. There was never any time spent on making sure the difference between the Moonrise Isles and the Empire of Cresh was really understood. Like, the Moonrise Isles relied entirely on their name for you to know they are islands. I assume the Empire of Cresh is on some sort of mainland thing? But again, I don't know.

I thought the styles of magic were cool, but, there were also a lot of weirdly specific details about the differences between the two with almost no time spent on the practice of magic. I learned more about dragon fighting and techniques than anything else.

The dragons. The dragons didn't make a lot of sense to me. It seemed to be a neat feature rather than a fully integrated concept. Like yes, dragons can shape shift into people. Each dragon can only sire one dragon. A dragons clothes go into some other space when they transform. Some dragons are from different places so they may be a water dragon instead of a fire dragon. ....and that's about it.

There's going to be a sequel to this book, based on how it ended, but I don't think I'll be reading it.

Happy reading!