Rat

by Melody Tink

Sarcastic Elanor may have found her match in Adymn, the brooding half-man and half-dragon. After murdering her family, Adymn kidnaps Elanor and takes her to Dargona Island. He calls her Rat, makes her cook, attend to the other dragons, and scrub feces off the cave walls. Elanor swears she hates him and vows to one day avenge her family's death. Her chance comes all too suddenly when Adymn demands she accompany him to Trana and pose as his wife so he can gain access to the royal court. She knows enough not to trust him, but while escape sounds all too tempting, Elanor can't help but feel Adymn is hiding a disturbing secret about his real agenda.

Genres: Fantasy, Dragons

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2009

Reviews

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered this little gem while perusing a long list of Kindle fantasy books. I read the description (a little leery since there was no review) and decided to take a chance. Am I glad I did! "Rat" is the story of a young girl, Elanor, kidnapped by dragons after her parents are killed in one of their scorchings. Elanor, known as 'Rat' to the dragons, is forced to be their slave and is therefore treated like vermin. The dragons' leader is a changeling named Adymn (cursed at a young age by a witch), and though he seems to treat her more fairly than the other dragons, he is often forced to beat Elanor (instead of kill her as the other dragons suggest) when she makes a mistake. Elanor naturally grows to loathe the dragons but one day Adymn takes her to her homeland to bring her out of their deadly reach. What follows is a very entertaining story of gradually revealed secrets interlaced with a hint of romance, a pinch of charm and a dash of intrigue. Our heroine is genuine: she has realistic feelings about her dismal situation and she proves herself strong and brave. Ms. Tink just doesn't hint at a flawed hero, but truly creates one. Adymn is a young man who feels forced to make hard choices and must suffer the consequences (despite his noble intentions), yet his sincerity and honesty help him overcome his guilt and in the end he recieves the forgiveness he so desperately longs for. As the plot slowly unravels to reveal all the answers in the end, I found myself still second guessing our heroine (would she really betray her new found friends, or would she revert to her earlier bitterness and seek revenge?), still wondering exactly who the two rogue dragons were (would they get away with their evil plot?), and finally, wondering how all this "mess" was going to work itself out in the end. All I can say is that Ms. Tink did a marvelous job on this novel and I eagerly await her future (hopefully several!) works. Well done!

[Sarah Castillo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rat, by Melody Tink is a fantasy novel with Dragons, featuring a young girl who is slave to the dragons. I know that from that alone there are a few people leaning forward in their seats. Dragons? You say?

Yes. Dragons! And the good, arrogant, kind of Dragons too!

This is one of those books I find myself liking in spite of myself. The plot is a sieve, the mystery blunders along, with several premature reveals, and the romance is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Also, there were several info dumps, though of small magnitude, in the middle of the action, which really slows the pace in those areas.

The reason I pressed on was because the dialogue and the characters were so enjoyable. Even the nasty people were fun to read about, with all their ridiculous foibles. If you like flawed characters, especially flawed heroines, you'll like this one. On occasion they feel inconsistent, especially the main character, but I think that's mainly because of...


The Romance! The romance in the book was just ridiculous. First of all, there's no reason that the main character should love this character, or even like this character! At most, MAYBE a wary respect could have grown up between them. It let me feeling like the author put them together because these are the two main leads and they're male and female and that means they should be together. Sure, they take some time to give each other space, but it's inevitable.

Remember ladies. The male you interact the most with in your life, according to novels, is your love interest.

Anyway, it was a pretty good book. If you are looking for a short dragon flick, you can pick this up. That is, if you've already read all the other awesome Dragon novels out there. Some popular authors are Naomi Novik, Robin Hobb, Anne McCaffrey, and Christopher Paolini. (I'm not saying they're good, I'm saying they're popular.) I haven't read enough dragon books to know what the stand outs are, but I'm told there are some amazing ones out there.

Check out my other reviews at my blog