I purchased a copy of Emma Hamm‘s Fire Heart.
They handed her a sword and bid her to take a throne…Lorelei is half elf in a kingdom where that bloodline is synonymous with “slave”. The Umbra King holds everyone captive with his pet dragon who knows no mercy. She hides in the shadows and steals to stay alive, until a rebel group gives her an offer she can’t refuse.
The King seeks a bride. If she can get close enough, she could drive a dagger into that wicked man’s heart. But the bridal games are more difficult than most. Lorelei must prove herself not only beautiful, but talented, poised, and deadly as the king. However, the closer she gets to saving her kingdom, the more she realizes a singular problem stands in her way.
The dragon.
The King’s bodyguard is more than a slathering beast. He’s a man. And the longer she’s near him, the more she realizes that perhaps the king isn’t the most dangerous person in the kingdom. Perhaps she had to guard not only her body, but her heart. For a dragon mates for life, and they’re hard pressed to give up their treasures.
My experience with Emma Hamm’s books has been inconsistent. I’ve read some that I absolutely loved (such as the Otherworld Series) and others that I’ve just been bored silly by (Bleeding Hearts). This was one of the latter. Maybe I just need to avoid any of her titles with Heart in it.
The writing in Fire Heart is good, and I liked the characters well enough. But the plot just left something to be desired. The main character was little more than a patsy. The main love interest was bland, though I did appreciate his fatherly attributes. The villain was a caricature. The side characters were largely uninteresting. It was all just kind of mid.
Maybe, despite the heroine being a couple of hundred years old, the story just felt too YA for me. Maybe I just expected more from this author. Who knows? All in all, I probably won’t pick up the next in the series unless it’s a freebie. But I’m still open to trying others of Hamm’s books.
Other Reviews:
The Rambling Book Nerd: Fire Heart, by Emma Hamm