Review: Realm of the Dragon

Realm of the Dragon by Cici Cordelia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Realm of the Dragon is the first book in The Soul Mate Tree Collective. It’s a series of standalone novellas, one each month for thirteen months, promising us a collection of wonderful stories all linked back to the soul mate tree. Despite being the first book in the series, I actually read this one second. Not that the order matters, as I said they’re standalone novels, but had I read them I order this book would have left me even more desperate to read the collection than I already am.

Realm of the Dragon offers us a fantasy romance – as the title would have you expecting. We’ve now entered March, meaning we’re aware of the first three stories in the series, and Realm of the Dragon is the only fantasy novel so far. Should there be more fantasy novels of this ilk… well, should such a book be written it will need to try extremely hard to outdo this one. There is no doubt that I fell in love with this story, giving it one of the strongest four star ratings I have ever given a novella – honestly, it had me wanting to give five stars at some points.

The story is super addictive, pulling you in from the very first page. We start in our world, before being thrown head first into the dragon realm. Honestly, I love dragons. Any story with a dragon in automatically gets picked up by me. You can never have too many dragons. I’m of the belief that if you feel your story is lacking, add in a dragon. So what if it’s a contemporary read? Just thrown in a dragon. A girl can never have too many dragons.

In all seriousness, though, as much as I love dragon stories they don’t always work out. Depending upon the dragon lore used, stories can end up being rather dull. Such is not the case here. I had so much fun finding out the specifics of the dragon world, watching it come to life before me. It was such an interesting read, such a wonderful fantasy aspect, that I was disappointed that I wasn’t given more.

In all honesty, that’s probably my only issue with the story: I wanted more. I feel as though this story would have done much better as a full-length novel. It was great as it was, but a part of me feels as though it could have been that bit better had it not been a novella.

After all, everything was so well done. The characters were wonderful – each was unique, each brought something to the story, and I was quickly pulled into their lives. The story was fabulous – it had action, it had development, and it kept me engaged throughout. The romance was beautiful – there was real emotion, we have chemistry, and I shipped it so hard. However, I feel as though certain things could have been given a bit more attention than they were. Certain things just seemed to happen a little bit too quickly, meaning certain aspects weren’t quite as shocking as they could have been. Hence, my belief that this story would have been better had it been longer.

Nevertheless, I had so much fun with this one. It was a brilliant first book in The Soul Mate Tree Collective; one that will leave you wanting to see what comes in the future books. Moreover, it has left me more than willing to look up more of the author’s work.

A great read, one I thoroughly enjoyed.

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