bibliodragon

Summary pinched from amazon.co.uk.
The Adamantine Palace lies at the centre of an empire that grew out of ashes. Once dragons ruled the world and man was little more than prey. Then a way of subduing the dragons alchemicly was discovered and now the dragons are bred to be little more than mounts for knights and highly valued tokens in the diplomatic power-players that underpin the rule of the competing aristocratic houses. The Empire has grown fat. And now one man wants it for himself. A man prepared to poison the king just as he has poisoned his own father. A man prepared to murder his lover and bed her daughter. A man fit to be king? But uknown to him there are flames on the way. A single dragon has gone missing. And even one dragon on the loose, unsubdued, returned to its full intelligence, its full fury, could spell disaster for the Empire. But because of the actions of one unscrupulous mercenary the rivals for the throne could soon be facing hundreds of dragons . . .

It has dragons in it.

Irritatingly it was only near the end of this book that I started to get into it, and internet research tells that this is the first in a trilogy. Which explains why it feels as if it is just setting things up for future books. With the point of view switching between a large cast of politicking human characters, and a few who are then quickly killed off, it was hard to really get a good handle on any of them, except irritatingly arrogant villain Prince Jehal, and for most of the book I was just waiting for the dragon to burninate them all. The world building is an even weaker point, and doesn't quite feel as if inhabited by more than the dragon kings and queens, despite mentions of thousands of soldiers and a brief interludes amongst outsider communities.

But once Snow the dragon wakes up things get a bit more interesting. Written in the scary fire-breathing monster mode yet I still found her sympathetic, though that might have been due to how bland I found the other characters. Understandably pissed at discovering she had been drugged into being nothing more than a fancy flying beast of burden, she rains down destruction yet to my disappointment her plot thread remained mostly separate from the politics of the humans. Looks like that's for the sequels.

A slow burn but diverting enough, though the next book promises to be more interesting.