A review by samijobrooker
Silk & Steel by Ariana Nash

dark slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No

0.5

This was a laughably bad book. It contained a lot of graphic depictions of rape and sexual assault, and I would say it was gratuitous except that the cornerstones of the dragonkin society's personal and political hierarchies appeared to be incest and sexual violence. So I guess it was crucial world-building.

The two romantic lead characters were fine but not all that interesting, and their relationship felt hollow all throughout the book.
For large portions of the story, at least one of them — often both — erroneously believes the other to be dead. And this happens multiple distinct times. It's like it's looping through the end of Romeo and Juliet over and over again. Absolutely baffling creative choice.


I normally relish the cheesy moment when the title of the book is said in the text of the book.
In this case the title of the book appears in the text in reference to one of the dudes' dicks. No joke!


I should have quit an hour or so into the audiobook, but I wouldn't have felt qualified to write this scathing review.
And I would have missed the dick title line.
Oh, AND I hoped it would get better!

Oh wait, there's one more thing I wanted to add! One of the most jarring things was when our elf protagonist encounters and begins to cooperate with humans. It brought up a lot of questions about what the hell this world actually is —
they're French? They have guns, and... solar panels?
— but none of that was interesting enough to actually make me want to find out more. The thing that stood out to me was that the text kept remarking on how awesome humans are. They're ingenious, they're so innovative, they're the most amazing and impressive and strong and resourceful... Who is this pro-human propaganda for??? It was inexplicable and hysterically funny.
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