I thought that the narration from Leilan (Orchid) was written with a different cadence and did sound Oriental to me. However, the POV from all the men sounded the same; no distinct voices and nothing to distinguish any of them from each other. Although they had different abilities, the way they thought and spoke -- the words they chose, the phrases they used, the tone and sentence structures were all the same. There was almost too much inner monologue from everyone but especially from Leilan. This slowed down the story and added small hills of info dumps here and there. But it gave a zen sort of feel to the story at times, so I think it did work for this particular book.
I don't know the author's ethnicity, but I am of Chinese descent and one big thing that bothered me was the way Leilan's twin boys were named: Zhang Wei and Li Qiang. Their names shouldn't be so dissimilar. The Chinese tend to use the same middle name for all the male children in the family -- even among the extended family with the same family name. So, one might be Zhang Wei and the other might be Zhang Xi. Or, one might be Li Qiang and the other might be Li Yuan.
I was also bothered by the fact that Orchid last met Titan and the others seven years ago, yet her boys are seven years old. At first I wondered if a dragon pregnancy might take less than nine months, but Leilan said she carried the boys for nine months, so it doesn't. Maybe, if she'd met Titan early in the year, it's possible that the children are seven years old, but I thought it more likely that they would be six... okay, it's a small quibble, but still!
Plus, I wanted more explanation about everyone's different abilities, like: WHY do they all have different abilities? You'd think that people from the same family would have similar abilities, because, hello, genetics. It was unusual that none of their abilities overlapped. I also never quite understood Miyo's abilities. But the descriptions of all their various abilities were interesting.
Ultimately, the really big thing that bugged me and the reason why this book gets three stars instead of four is that we never saw Leilan tell Titan and the others about her past. Ever. In her POV, in her internal monologue, we know that she was mistreated and abused as a child in Clan Wu. But she never once talks to them about it. Even when she tells Riaan, "No implements," (meaning no BDSM whips and paddles) she doesn't explain why.
Leilan has been so alone all her life and has had to hold it together for so long that I was looking forward to at least one scene where she lets go and is able to grieve for the pain she had endured. But we never see this happen. We see her moving in with the men and challenging them, making sure they know she's no pushover. We see her having sex with all of them and getting spanked and -- to her surprise -- liking it. We see her trusting them to protect and care for her sons. But we never see her allowing herself to be vulnerable with them.
And to me, that's a very key thing that this relationship needed to have. How could she not tell them about her past? Xerxes knows some of it due to his gift of touching objects and reading the events attached to them. But even he doesn't know the full story. I thought they needed to know, because only then would they really understand why she is the way she is. And only then would they be able to help her heal from the wounds of the past and feel accepted and loved. I kept waiting for one of them to go overboard during sex with the spanking and dominance, and for her to get stiff and fearful, which could lead to a revelation. But it never happened.
In this book you need to be prepared for an age gap relationship. Riaan is only 19 or 20 and Leilan is about seven years older than he is. His three older brothers, the triplets, are about four years younger than she is. She keeps thinking of Riaan as a kid, so he calls her a brat and dominates her sexually to show her that he's all grown up. Ummm... I don't know that I considered that sexy. I just have a really hard time wrapping my head around a confident, experienced, and in control 19-year-old dom. Even the most mature 19-year-old I've ever met wouldn't be able to pull off that vibe.
The story started out strong, and I liked Leilan's spunkiness, the way she wouldn't blindly carry out the hit just to get her dream place in Clan Wu's assassin's guild. I liked how she was extremely capable and not the kind of heroine to need saving. In fact, I was gleeful that she could bring the mightly Clan Desden alphas to their knees so easily. But later on in the story she lost some of that edge and that badassness.
After the 7-year gap... well, first of all, I wanted to know why there was a 7-year-gap, when she did make some attempt to contact Titan after finding out that she was pregnant. And I thought it was strange for the younger guys to have all fallen for her during the brief time that they met her. Yes, she had saved them from the fire, so maybe they would have idolised her, but fall for her? Is it because they were so young? The triplets were 16. However I tried to look at it, it still felt odd. That the three oldest alphas (Titan, Miyo, and Koa) would not have been able to forget her or get over her, that I could accept. After all, they'd had more time to connect with her through some sexual activity, and the twins (Miyo and Koa) got to see her badassness in action. But there was no connection with the younger alphas, nothing personal. The fact that the four younger alphas also wanted her felt a bit forced to me.
This was a 3.5 read but I usually round down instead of up. I really wanted the alphas to shower more praise on Leilan and to show her that they are not like the alphas in Clan Wu, not just by caring for her sexual pleasure, but by overall caring. It felt like everyone wanted to spank her, and while I get that, there just wasn't enough tenderness in between the spankings to help me understand why Leilan would feel safe with them or trust them.