Set
in Victorian England, Legend of the Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper, is a
supernatural adventure. Mina, a
proper young lady, works for a professor as a secretary. She is quite content with running the
show for the professor, and she is dismayed when Stephen MacAlasdair appears
and insists on seeing the professor, his old friend. It turns out that the he and the visitor share an old enemy
and MacAlasdair wants to warn him.
Suspicious
of MacAlasdair, Mina goes to visit his home to speak to the servants, and while
there, she discovers that he possesses supernatural powers. To be specific, he is a dragon. Mina agrees to keep his secret and to
stay on as his secretary for a nice chunk of change. Predictably, the two of them fight their burgeoning attraction
to one another (quite futilely, of course) and they end up fighting the enemy
together.
I
have a few major issues with this book. First, other than an occasional Scottish
phrase, there is not much that identifies MacAlasdair as Scottish. Not that I really care to read much of
a brogue, but he really felt one dimensional to me. While I am on the subject of Stephen, the artifact that is
at the center of the drama does not change Stephen into a dragon—it just
influences when he is able to do so.
Huh? It was a non-problem
to me. It felt insignificant
to me, so I just did not care all that much.
The
character development in the story was underdeveloped, and so was the
setting. Quite frankly, I did not
care really about much that happened in this book. The plot was hit and miss for me—thirty pages or so of “can’t
wait to read”, followed by thirty pages or so of “when will something happen?”.
Overall,
Legend of the Highland Dragon was a
miss for me. Greater attention to
character development, a more fleshed out setting, and a more coherent plot
would make this book much more interesting.
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Regina
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The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.
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