Never Deal with Dragons by Lorenda Christensen
Paranormal Romance
July 22, 2013
Carina Press

Reviewed by Mandi

This book grabbed me right from the start. Lorenda Christensen has created a really fabulous world where humans and dragons live side by side in semi-peace. Right around WWIII (yes..three) in an attempt to cure cancer, a doctor mixed up human and reptile DNA, threw it away into an incinerator and three years later, dragons were born. They speak dragonspeak, a foreign language to most humans, except for a select few born with the ability to understand them. Myrna is one of these people who works for Dragon Relations, Arbitration and Cooperative Interspecies Mediation or DRACIM for short. In plain words, Myrna makes peace between humans and dragons when there has been an incident. Although humans outnumber dragons 300,000 to one, dragons are king of the food chain. While we were fighting in WWIII, they were breaking into banks and stealing all of our valuables. They are wealthy, arrogant and in charge.

A year ago Myrna was in love with Trian, a man who works for one of the dragon lords. She thought they were in love until one night Trian leaves her without saying goodbye, and took important paperwork of hers with him. Because she lost these documents, she got demoted at her job, and with Trian walking out on her, her misery level became at an all time high. But now it is a year later, she has moved on but still dealing with a crap position at work. When Trian walks through the door, she knows her day is about to get worse.Myrna is needed to help negotiate some peace between the North American dragons and a ruthless Chinese dragon leader. The idea of this job excites and challenges her and she ends up working quite closely with Trian too.

The first half of this book is really strong. I was so impressed with this world the author has created. I love that the dragons are feared, meat-eaters, some very ruthless, others more shy and timid. They live in houses, they decorate, they speak and then they go out and eat a whole cow. I like that it is set into the future where technology is wiped out because of the war and things are just a little different (although very similar to earth today). There are seven dragon lords, all from the original creation and we get to know two of them in this book.

Most of the dragon population accepted humans for what we were: a weaker race they sometimes paid money to keep from squawking. They were fine with us interfering when the price was only cash, less so when we tried to order them around directly. It was like asking a whale to obey a goldfish.

We were a necessary annoyance. Our race provided things essential to survival, for both dragons and humans. Dragons couldn’t exactly manage their own cattle. And they weren’t too keen on menial labor, such as cleaning, farming and building.

Myrna is a wonderful protagonist. Smart, funny, and a really hard worker. Being a dragonspeaker, she has an edge to a regular human. She is in awe of dragons. She has respect and a healthy fear of them, but they don’t terrify or disgust her. She thinks they are beautiful, each one different colored, shaped and sized. When she has to start negotiations with the leader of the Chinese clan, she learns just how violent and ruthless dragons can be.

This book went a direction I wasn’t necessarily expecting. With some bigger twists and a mystery to solve, it did get a bit tedious towards the end. I was also a little disappointed in the romance. Trian has to win back Myrna’s heart and I felt they had chemistry but a lack of emotion. There isn’t really a lot of time spent with these two romantically. I didn’t mind it the first half while I was so immersed in the world, but I did notice it in the second half.

I think this author has a cool thing going on in this book. She has a great and unique voice. Excited for the next one.

Rating: B

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