A review by phantomlimb
Piece of Dragon by Laurel Chase

2.0

The MC is a qilin, a "unicorn-like" shifter that is driven by it's nature to have sex. The qilin does have a choice though and it fights its nature constantly, because it pushes its feelings into humans. Essentially it causes "backfeed" with any human it comes in contact with. At intimate contact, any feeling the human has causes the qilin to have the same feeling which is reflected back into the human and which in turn causes the human feeling to double which again causes the feeling to double in the qilin which is then reflected back into the human, etc. etc.. There is no affection at this point of the book series at all. A lot of talk of sex and lusting but nothing about affection. There are some slight feelings from the lion shifter, but he is berated for his feelings by some of the other supes. I can see why some people get about 65% in, and get bored, or just wonder "where is the affection?" The supes just want to use the qilin as a key ("Are you the gate key?") to get home, a tool ("sex provider"), nothing more. The qilin is all for this, because that sex is its nature, and since it can have sex with the supes and not get "backfeed", or pregnant its all for following after its nature. The qilin doesn't want any feelings, just sex, and can't help itself. The qilin must "mate" with a supe to gain the supe's magic power permanently, but "mating" in this context means that the qilin has to hold or share a portion of the supe's soul. In reality, the author should have chosen a different word than "mating", because "mating" is contextual to a relationship. Even the qilin is confused about the use of the term "mating." It seems supe meaning of "mating" with the the qilin does not necessarily mean that the qilin has to care for them, like them or love them or in fact have any relationship. The "mating" does not even have a reproductive aspect since qilin can only have offspring with qilin. The qilin can receive magic power from supes temporarily through touch. Power and lust is the only reason for the qilin's sex because it doesn't like the supes, lust yes, like no. It does like the idea of the team and wants to be a part of the team or family, but it doesn't seem to like the individuals on the team. Hopefully as the series progresses the that qilin will progress from being a tool ("sex provider") to the team to something more and that the qilin will learn to care about the individuals not just as a team but as individuals and not to just use them as "sexy" magic power generators. Still no affection, the qilin does care slightly more for a couple of the supes but nothing more, in fact in the last 3% of the book, the qilin exhibits more individual "caring" for the dragon shifter who was absent for almost 95% of the book, and who also, by the way is introduced, attempts to kidnap the qilin and leaves in the first 3% of the book, then for any one of the other team members (It appears to be a very fast case of stockholm syndrome)... Though qilin refers the team as "my guys" there is nothing, no feeling of possession or mutual affection, though the qilin does get jealous of its position as "sex provider" for the team during the last 1% of the story because another female vampire supe is introduced.