Dragonspell

by Danyelle Leafty

A fairy godmother can never catch a break.

Nerissa should have been getting ready to celebrate another successful Happily Ever After. Instead, she has to track down her runaway DID—Damsel in Distress—who may or may not have been kidnapped by a dragon.

A dragon who happens to be a close, personal friend.

But time is running out. Her DID has attracted the attention of some very powerful winds bent on gaining their freedom—and they aren’t above using her DID to gain it.

So that’s one fairy tale temporarily on hold while Nerissa deals with a dragon, seven errant winds, and her DID.

Because if there’s one thing a fair godmother won’t tolerate, it’s an Unhappily Ever After.

Genres: Young Adult, Romance

120 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 4, 2015

Reviews

[[ J o ] · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute little novella. To begin with, I was quite captivated by the story of a non-traditional fairytale princess and a dragon whose only joy is to collect dusty papers of the history of all the inhabitants of the land, magic or otherwise. It proposes to show a fairytale from the perspective of a Fairy Godmother, as opposed to the usual omniscient storytelling we usually find there, coming at a time when fairytale re-workings were all the rage.

The writing is solid, but something I cannot put my finger on happened about half-way through and it became... Claggy. Claggy is a northern term that means, you know in summer, when the skin under your breasts gets sweaty and warm and sticky? That's Claggy. It stuck and I felt bored by it, but I also saw a hope that perhaps I might try another book. The plot itself is novella-sized and novella-developed and, although it starts out well, I don't think the length truly encapsulates the imagination of the author quite well enough.

[Teya Teya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was really cute. I got a little confused here and there, although I take full responsibility of being distracted from my crazy life. It was really cute though.

[H.L. Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pleasantly surprising. I kind of expected a very basic fairy tale send up fantasy and while it does have some elements of that (a little bit of tongue in cheek, self-aware humor, some definite "Fairy Tale cliches with a twist"), the characters and magic are complex. Everything seems to follow set rules which I appreciate (no magical "poof and it just happens").
My one complaint, there was a lot going on in the last quarter or so. Sometimes it got a little hard to follow because what was happening was fast paced and a lot flying at me at once and while my instinct in conclusions is to read big gulps to figure out what's going to happen ... this took more, "Okay, I have to carefully imagine how this all fits together" then I personally prefer in climactic scenes.